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Conflict-free connection numbers of line graphs
A path in an edge-colored graph is called \emph{conflict-free} if it contains
at least one color used on exactly one of its edges. An edge-colored graph
is \emph{conflict-free connected} if for any two distinct vertices of ,
there is a conflict-free path connecting them. For a connected graph , the
\emph{conflict-free connection number} of , denoted by , is defined
as the minimum number of colors that are required to make conflict-free
connected. In this paper, we investigate the conflict-free connection numbers
of connected claw-free graphs, especially line graphs. We first show that for
an arbitrary connected graph , there exists a positive integer such that
. Secondly, we get the exact value of the conflict-free
connection number of a connected claw-free graph, especially a connected line
graph. Thirdly, we prove that for an arbitrary connected graph and an
arbitrary positive integer , we always have , with only the exception that is isomorphic to a star of order
at least~ and . Finally, we obtain the exact values of ,
and use them as an efficient tool to get the smallest nonnegative integer
such that .Comment: 11 page
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