1,221 research outputs found
Computing Minimum Rainbow and Strong Rainbow Colorings of Block Graphs
A path in an edge-colored graph is rainbow if no two edges of it are
colored the same. The graph is rainbow-connected if there is a rainbow path
between every pair of vertices. If there is a rainbow shortest path between
every pair of vertices, the graph is strongly rainbow-connected. The
minimum number of colors needed to make rainbow-connected is known as the
rainbow connection number of , and is denoted by . Similarly,
the minimum number of colors needed to make strongly rainbow-connected is
known as the strong rainbow connection number of , and is denoted by
. We prove that for every , deciding whether
is NP-complete for split graphs, which form a subclass
of chordal graphs. Furthermore, there exists no polynomial-time algorithm for
approximating the strong rainbow connection number of an -vertex split graph
with a factor of for any unless P = NP. We
then turn our attention to block graphs, which also form a subclass of chordal
graphs. We determine the strong rainbow connection number of block graphs, and
show it can be computed in linear time. Finally, we provide a polynomial-time
characterization of bridgeless block graphs with rainbow connection number at
most 4.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure
Hardness and Algorithms for Rainbow Connectivity
An edge-colored graph G is rainbow connected if any two vertices are
connected by a path whose edges have distinct colors. The rainbow connectivity
of a connected graph G, denoted rc(G), is the smallest number of colors that
are needed in order to make G rainbow connected. In addition to being a natural
combinatorial problem, the rainbow connectivity problem is motivated by
applications in cellular networks. In this paper we give the first proof that
computing rc(G) is NP-Hard. In fact, we prove that it is already NP-Complete to
decide if rc(G) = 2, and also that it is NP-Complete to decide whether a given
edge-colored (with an unbounded number of colors) graph is rainbow connected.
On the positive side, we prove that for every > 0, a connected graph
with minimum degree at least has bounded rainbow connectivity,
where the bound depends only on , and the corresponding coloring can
be constructed in polynomial time. Additional non-trivial upper bounds, as well
as open problems and conjectures are also pre sented
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