On the complexity of the circular chromatic number

Circular chromatic number, $\chi_c$ is a natural generalization of chromatic number. It is known that it is \NP-hard to determine whether or not an arbitrary graph $G$ satisfies $\chi(G) = \chi_c(G)$. In this paper we prove that this problem is \NP-hard even if the chromatic number of the graph is known. This answers a question of Xuding Zhu. Also we prove that for all positive integers $k \ge 2$ and $n \ge 3$, for a given graph $G$ with $\chi(G)=n$, it is \NP-complete to verify if $\chi_c(G) \le n- \frac{1}{k}$.