Chromatic capacity and graph operations

The chromatic capacityχ_cap(G) of a graph G is the largest k for which there exists a k-coloring of the edges of G such that, for every coloring of the vertices of G with the same colors, some edge is colored the same as both its vertices. We prove that there is an unbounded function f:N→N such that χ_cap(G)?f(χ(G)) for almost every graph G, where χ denotes the chromatic number. We show that for any positive integers n and k with k?n/2 there exists a graph G with χ(G)=n and χ_cap(G)=n-k, extending a result of Greene. We obtain bounds on that are tight as r→∞, where is the complete n-partite graph with r vertices in each part. Finally, for any positive integers p and q we construct a graph G with χ_cap(G)+1=χ(G)=p that contains no odd cycles of length less than q.