96 research outputs found
Normal edge-colorings of cubic graphs
A normal -edge-coloring of a cubic graph is an edge-coloring with
colors having the additional property that when looking at the set of colors
assigned to any edge and the four edges adjacent it, we have either exactly
five distinct colors or exactly three distinct colors. We denote by
the smallest , for which admits a normal
-edge-coloring. Normal -edge-colorings were introduced by Jaeger in order
to study his well-known Petersen Coloring Conjecture. More precisely, it is
known that proving for every bridgeless cubic graph is
equivalent to proving Petersen Coloring Conjecture and then, among others,
Cycle Double Cover Conjecture and Berge-Fulkerson Conjecture. Considering the
larger class of all simple cubic graphs (not necessarily bridgeless), some
interesting questions naturally arise. For instance, there exist simple cubic
graphs, not bridgeless, with . On the other hand, the known
best general upper bound for was . Here, we improve it by
proving that for any simple cubic graph , which is best
possible. We obtain this result by proving the existence of specific no-where
zero -flows in -edge-connected graphs.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figure
Normal 6-edge-colorings of some bridgeless cubic graphs
In an edge-coloring of a cubic graph, an edge is poor or rich, if the set of
colors assigned to the edge and the four edges adjacent it, has exactly five or
exactly three distinct colors, respectively. An edge is normal in an
edge-coloring if it is rich or poor in this coloring. A normal
-edge-coloring of a cubic graph is an edge-coloring with colors such
that each edge of the graph is normal. We denote by the smallest
, for which admits a normal -edge-coloring. Normal edge-colorings
were introduced by Jaeger in order to study his well-known Petersen Coloring
Conjecture. It is known that proving for every bridgeless
cubic graph is equivalent to proving Petersen Coloring Conjecture. Moreover,
Jaeger was able to show that it implies classical conjectures like Cycle Double
Cover Conjecture and Berge-Fulkerson Conjecture. Recently, two of the authors
were able to show that any simple cubic graph admits a normal
-edge-coloring, and this result is best possible. In the present paper, we
show that any claw-free bridgeless cubic graph, permutation snark, tree-like
snark admits a normal -edge-coloring. Finally, we show that any bridgeless
cubic graph admits a -edge-coloring such that at least edges of are normal.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with
arXiv:1804.0944
Strong edge colorings of graphs and the covers of Kneser graphs
A proper edge coloring of a graph is strong if it creates no bichromatic path
of length three. It is well known that for a strong edge coloring of a
-regular graph at least colors are needed. We show that a -regular
graph admits a strong edge coloring with colors if and only if it covers
the Kneser graph . In particular, a cubic graph is strongly
-edge-colorable whenever it covers the Petersen graph. One of the
implications of this result is that a conjecture about strong edge colorings of
subcubic graphs proposed by Faudree et al. [Ars Combin. 29 B (1990), 205--211]
is false
On cubic bridgeless graphs whose edge-set cannot be covered by four perfect matchings
The problem of establishing the number of perfect matchings necessary to
cover the edge-set of a cubic bridgeless graph is strictly related to a famous
conjecture of Berge and Fulkerson. In this paper we prove that deciding whether
this number is at most 4 for a given cubic bridgeless graph is NP-complete. We
also construct an infinite family of snarks (cyclically
4-edge-connected cubic graphs of girth at least five and chromatic index four)
whose edge-set cannot be covered by 4 perfect matchings. Only two such graphs
were known. It turns out that the family also has interesting
properties with respect to the shortest cycle cover problem. The shortest cycle
cover of any cubic bridgeless graph with edges has length at least
, and we show that this inequality is strict for graphs of .
We also construct the first known snark with no cycle cover of length less than
.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figure
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