On hamiltonian colorings for some graphs

For a connected graph G and any two vertices u and v in G, let D(u,v) denote the length of a longest u-v path in G. A hamiltonian coloring of a connected graph G of order n is an assignment c of colors (positive integers) to the vertices of G such that |c(u)−c(v)|+D(u,v)≥n−1 for every two distinct vertices u and v in G. The value of a hamiltonian coloring c is the maximum color assigned to a vertex of G. The hamiltonian chromatic number of G is taken over all hamiltonian colorings c of G. In this paper we discuss the hamiltonian chromatic number of graphs G with . As examples, we determine the hamiltonian chromatic number for a class of caterpillars, and double stars.     

On the degree distance of a graph

If G is a connected graph with vertex set V, then the degree distance of G, D^′(G), is defined as , where degw is the degree of vertex w, and d(u,v) denotes the distance between u and v. We prove the asymptotically sharp upper bound for graphs of order n and diameter d. As a corollary we obtain the bound for graphs of order n. This essentially proves a conjecture by Tomescu [I. Tomescu, Some extremal properties of the degree distance of a graph, Discrete Appl. Math. (98) (1999) 159-163].     

Edge covered critical multigraphs

Let G be a multigraph with edge set E(G). An edge coloring C of G is called an edge covered coloring, if each color appears at least once at each vertex v∈V(G). The maximum positive integer k such that G has a k edge covered coloring is called the edge covered chromatic index of G and is denoted by . A graph G is said to be of class if and otherwise of class. A pair of vertices {u,v} is said to be critical if . A graph G is said to be edge covered critical if it is of class and every edge with vertices in V(G) not belonging to E(G) is critical. Some properties about edge covered critical graphs are considered.     

Forwarding and optical indices of a graph

Motivated by wavelength-assignment problems for all-to-all traffic in optical networks, we study graph parameters related to sets of paths connecting all pairs of vertices. We consider sets of both undirected and directed paths, under minimisation criteria known as edge congestion and wavelength count; this gives rise to four parameters of a graph G: its edge forwarding index π(G), arc forwarding index , undirected optical index , and directed optical index .In the paper we address two long-standing open problems: whether the equality holds for all graphs, and whether indices π(G) and are hard to compute. For the first problem, we give an example of a family of planar graphs {G_k} such that . For the second problem, we show that determining either π(G) or is NP-hard.     

r-Strong edge colorings of graphs

Let G be a graph and for any natural number r, denotes the minimum number of colors required for a proper edge coloring of G in which no two vertices with distance at most r are incident to edges colored with the same set of colors. In [Z. Zhang, L. Liu, J. Wang, Adjacent strong edge coloring of graphs, Appl. Math. Lett. 15 (2002) 623-626] it has been proved that for any tree T with at least three vertices, . Here we generalize this result and show that . Moreover, we show that if for any two vertices u and v with maximum degree d(u,v)?3, then . Also for any tree T with Δ(T)?3 we prove that . Finally, it is shown that for any graph G with no isolated edges, .     

Two classes of edge domination in graphs

Let (, resp.) be the number of (local) signed edge domination of a graph G [B. Xu, On signed edge domination numbers of graphs, Discrete Math. 239 (2001) 179-189]. In this paper, we prove mainly that and hold for any graph G of order n(n?4), and pose several open problems and conjectures.     

Rainbow domination on trees

This paper studies a variation of domination in graphs called rainbow domination. For a positive integer k, a k-rainbow dominating function of a graph G is a function f from V(G) to the set of all subsets of {1,2,…,k} such that for any vertex v with f(v)=0? we have ∪_u∈NG(v)f(u)={1,2,…,k}. The 1-rainbow domination is the same as the ordinary domination. The k-rainbow domination problem is to determine the k-rainbow domination number of a graph G, that is the minimum value of ∑_v∈V(G)|f(v)| where f runs over all k-rainbow dominating functions of G. In this paper, we prove that the k-rainbow domination problem is NP-complete even when restricted to chordal graphs or bipartite graphs. We then give a linear-time algorithm for the k-rainbow domination problem on trees. For a given tree T, we also determine the smallest k such that .