Some bounds on the number of colors in interval and cyclic interval edge colorings of graphs

An interval$t$-coloring of a multigraph $G$ is a proper edge coloring with colors $1,\dots ,t$ such that the colors of the edges incident with every vertex of $G$ are colored by consecutive colors. A cyclic interval$t$-coloring of a multigraph $G$ is a proper edge coloring with colors $1,\dots ,t$ such that the colors of the edges incident with every vertex of $G$ are colored by consecutive colors, under the condition that color $1$ is considered as consecutive to color $t$. Denote by $w\left(G\right)$ ($w_c\left(G\right)$) and $W\left(G\right)$ ($W_c\left(G\right)$) the minimum and maximum number of colors in a (cyclic) interval coloring of a multigraph $G$, respectively. We present some new sharp bounds on $w\left(G\right)$ and $W\left(G\right)$ for multigraphs $G$ satisfying various conditions. In particular, we show that if $G$ is a $2$-connected multigraph with an interval coloring, then $W\left(G\right)\le 1+?\frac{\left|V\left(G\right)\right|}{2}?(\Delta \left(G\right)?1)$. We also give several results towards the general conjecture that $W_c\left(G\right)\le \left|V\left(G\right)\right|$ for any triangle-free graph $G$ with a cyclic interval coloring; we establish that approximate versions of this conjecture hold for several families of graphs, and we prove that the conjecture is true for graphs with maximum degree at most $4$.