When chromatic polynomials coincide with list-color functions: a threshold linear in the maximum degree

Let $G$ be a simple graph with maximum degree $Δ\ge 3$, and let $P(G,k)$ denote its chromatic polynomial. For each positive integer $k$, the list-color function $P_{\ell}(G,k)$ is the minimum number of $L$-colorings of $G$ over all $k$-assignments $L$. In this paper, we prove that $P_{\ell}(G,k)=P(G