Upper bounds on the linear chromatic number of a graph

A proper vertex coloring of a graph G is linear if the graph induced by the vertices of any two color classes is a union of vertex-disjoint paths. The linear chromatic number of G is the smallest number of colors in a linear coloring of G.Let G be a graph with maximum degree Δ(G). In this paper we prove the following results: (1) ; (2) if Δ(G)≤4; (3) if Δ(G)≤5; (4) if G is planar and Δ(G)≥52.