New Hardness Results in Rainbow Connectivity

A path in an edge colored graph is said to be a rainbow path if no two edges on the path have the same color. An edge colored graph is (strongly) rainbow connected if there exists a (geodesic) rainbow path between every pair of vertices. The (strong) rainbow connectivity of a graph $G$, denoted by ($src(G)$, respectively) $rc(G)$ is the smallest number of colors required to edge color the graph such that the graph is (strong) rainbow connected. It is known that for \emph{even} $k$ to decide whether the rainbow connectivity of a graph is at most $k$ or not is NP-hard. It was conjectured that for all $k$, to decide whether $rc(G) \leq k$ is NP-hard. In this paper we prove this conjecture. We also show that it is NP-hard to decide whether $src(G) \leq k$ or not even when $G$ is a bipartite graph.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figure

Strong rainbow connection numbers of toroidal meshes

In 2011, Li et al. \cite{LLL} obtained an upper bound of the strong rainbow connection number of an $r$-dimensional undirected toroidal mesh. In this paper, this bound is improved. As a result, we give a negative answer to their problem.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figure

Hardness result for the total rainbow kk-connection of graphs

A path in a total-colored graph is called \emph{total rainbow} if its edges and internal vertices have distinct colors. For an $\ell$-connected graph $G$ and an integer $k$ with $1\leq k \leq\ell$, the \emph{total rainbow $k$-connection number} of $G$, denoted by $trc_k(G)$, is the minimum number of colors used in a total coloring of $G$ to make $G$ \emph{total rainbow $k$-connected}, that is, any two vertices of $G$ are connected by $k$ internally vertex-disjoint total rainbow paths. In this paper, we study the computational complexity of total rainbow $k$-connection number of graphs. We show that it is NP-complete to decide whether $trc_k(G)=3$.Comment: 10 page

Rainbow connections for planar graphs and line graphs

An edge-colored graph $G$ is rainbow connected if any two vertices are connected by a path whose edges have distinct colors. The rainbow connection number of a connected graph $G$, denoted by $rc(G)$, is the smallest number of colors that are needed in order to make $G$ rainbow connected. It was proved that computing $rc(G)$ is an NP-Hard problem, as well as that even deciding whether a graph has $rc(G)=2$ is NP-Complete. It is known that deciding whether a given edge-colored graph is rainbow connected is NP-Complete. We will prove that it is still NP-Complete even when the edge-colored graph is a planar bipartite graph. We also give upper bounds of the rainbow connection number of outerplanar graphs with small diameters. A vertex-colored graph is rainbow vertex-connected if any two vertices are connected by a path whose internal vertices have distinct colors. The rainbow vertex-connection number of a connected graph $G$, denoted by $rvc(G)$, is the smallest number of colors that are needed in order to make $G$ rainbow vertex-connected. It is known that deciding whether a given vertex-colored graph is rainbow vertex-connected is NP-Complete. We will prove that it is still NP-Complete even when the vertex-colored graph is a line graph.Comment: 13 page

Conflict-free connections: algorithm and complexity

A path in an(a) edge(vertex)-colored graph is called \emph{a conflict-free path} if there exists a color used on only one of its edges(vertices). An(A) edge(vertex)-colored graph is called \emph{conflict-free (vertex-)connected} if there is a conflict-free path between each pair of distinct vertices. We call the graph $G$ \emph{strongly conflict-free connected }if there exists a conflict-free path of length $d_G(u,v)$ for every two vertices $u,v\in V(G)$. And the \emph{strong conflict-free connection number} of a connected graph $G$, denoted by $scfc(G)$, is defined as the smallest number of colors that are required to make $G$ strongly conflict-free connected. In this paper, we first investigate the question: Given a connected graph $G$ and a coloring $c: E(or\ V)\rightarrow \{1,2,\cdots,k\} \ (k\geq 1)$of the graph, determine whether or not$G$is, respectively, conflict-free connected, vertex-conflict-free connected, strongly conflict-free connected under coloring$c$. We solve this question by providing polynomial-time algorithms. We then show that it is NP-complete to decide whether there is a k-edge-coloring$(k\geq 2)$of$G$such that all pairs$(u,v)\in P \ (P\subset V\times V)$are strongly conflict-free connected. Finally, we prove that the problem of deciding whether$scfc(G)\leq k$$(k\geq 2)$for a given graph$G$is NP-complete.Comment: 17 pages. The main change is in Subsection 3.2, Theorem 3.4, where we add the result and proof of the NP-completeness for the case$k=2$, which was not done in the old versio

Note on the complexity of deciding the rainbow connectedness for bipartite graphs

A path in an edge-colored graph is said to be a rainbow path if no two edges on the path have the same color. An edge-colored graph is (strongly) rainbow connected if there exists a rainbow (geodesic) path between every pair of vertices. The (strong) rainbow connection number of $G$, denoted by ($scr(G)$, respectively) $rc(G)$, is the smallest number of colors that are needed in order to make $G$ (strongly) rainbow connected. Though for a general graph $G$ it is NP-Complete to decide whether $rc(G)=2$, in this paper, we show that the problem becomes easy when $G$ is a bipartite graph. Moreover, it is known that deciding whether a given edge-colored (with an unbound number of colors) graph is rainbow connected is NP-Complete. We will prove that it is still NP-Complete even when the edge-colored graph is bipartite. We also show that a few NP-hard problems on rainbow connection are indeed NP-Complete.Comment: 6 page

A Polynomial Time Algorithm for Computing the Strong Rainbow Connection Numbers of Odd Cacti

We consider the problem of computing the strong rainbow connection number $src(G)$ for cactus graphs $G$ in which all cycles have odd length. We present a formula to calculate $src(G)$ for such odd cacti which can be evaluated in linear time, as well as an algorithm for computing the corresponding optimal strong rainbow edge coloring, with polynomial worst case run time complexity. Although computing $src(G)$ is NP-hard in general, previous work has demonstrated that it may be computed in polynomial time for certain classes of graphs, including cycles, trees and block clique graphs. This work extends the class of graphs for which $src(G)$ may be computed in polynomial time.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figure

An integer program and new lower bounds for computing the strong rainbow connection numbers of graphs

We present an integer programming model to compute the strong rainbow connection number, $src(G)$, of any simple graph $G$. We introduce several enhancements to the proposed model, including a fast heuristic, and a variable elimination scheme. Moreover, we present a novel lower bound for $src(G)$ which may be of independent research interest. We solve the integer program both directly and using an alternative method based on iterative lower bound improvement, the latter of which we show to be highly effective in practice. To our knowledge, these are the first computational methods for the strong rainbow connection problem. We demonstrate the efficacy of our methods by computing the strong rainbow connection numbers of graphs containing up to $379$ vertices.Comment: 27 pages, 7 figure