An application of the regularity lemma in generalized Ramsey theory

Given graphs G and H, an edge coloring of G is called an (H,q)‐coloring if the edges of every copy of H ? G together receive at least q colors. Let r(G,H,q) denote the minimum number of colors in a (H,q)‐coloring of G. In 9 Erd?s and Gyárfás studied r(K_n,K_p,q) if p and q are fixed and n tends to infinity. They determined for every fixed p the smallest q (denoted by q_lin) for which r(K_n,K_p,q) is linear in n and the smallest q (denoted by q_quad) for which r(K_n,K_p,q) is quadratic in n. They raised the problem of determining the smallest q for which we have . In this paper by using the Regularity Lemma we show that if , then we have . © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 44: 39–49, 2003