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 $\epsilon$ > 0, a connected graph with minimum degree at least $\epsilon n$ has bounded rainbow connectivity, where the bound depends only on $\epsilon$, 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

Rainbow kk-connectivity of random bipartite graphs

A path in an edge-colored graph $G$ is called a rainbow path if no two edges of the path are colored the same. The minimum number of colors required to color the edges of $G$ such that every pair of vertices are connected by at least $k$ internally vertex-disjoint rainbow paths is called the rainbow $k$-connectivity of the graph $G$, denoted by $rc_k(G)$. For the random graph $G(n,p)$, He and Liang got a sharp threshold function for the property $rc_k(G(n,p))\leq d$. In this paper, we extend this result to the case of random bipartite graph $G(m,n,p)$.Comment: 15 pages. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1012.1942 by other author

The (k,ℓ)(k,\ell)-rainbow index of random graphs

A tree in an edge colored graph is said to be a rainbow tree if no two edges on the tree share the same color. Given two positive integers $k$, $\ell$ with $k\geq 3$, the \emph{$(k,\ell)$-rainbow index} $rx_{k,\ell}(G)$ of $G$ is the minimum number of colors needed in an edge-coloring of $G$ such that for any set $S$ of $k$ vertices of $G$, there exist $\ell$ internally disjoint rainbow trees connecting $S$. This concept was introduced by Chartrand et. al., and there have been very few related results about it. In this paper, We establish a sharp threshold function for $rx_{k,\ell}(G_{n,p})\leq k$ and $rx_{k,\ell}(G_{n,M})\leq k,$ respectively, where $G_{n,p}$ and $G_{n,M}$ are the usually defined random graphs.Comment: 7 pages. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1212.6845, arXiv:1310.278

Rainbow Connection of Random Regular Graphs

An edge colored graph $G$ is rainbow edge connected if any two vertices are connected by a path whose edges have distinct colors. The rainbow connection 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. In this work we study the rainbow connection of the random $r$-regular graph $G=G(n,r)$ of order $n$, where $r\ge 4$ is a constant. We prove that with probability tending to one as $n$ goes to infinity the rainbow connection of $G$ satisfies $rc(G)=O(\log n)$, which is best possible up to a hidden constant