On small Mixed Pattern Ramsey numbers

We call the minimum order of any complete graph so that for any coloring of the edges by $k$ colors it is impossible to avoid a monochromatic or rainbow triangle, a Mixed Ramsey number. For any graph $H$ with edges colored from the above set of $k$ colors, if we consider the condition of excluding $H$ in the above definition, we produce a \emph{Mixed Pattern Ramsey number}, denoted $M_k(H)$. We determine this function in terms of $k$ for all colored $4$-cycles and all colored $4$-cliques. We also find bounds for $M_k(H)$ when $H$ is a monochromatic odd cycles, or a star for sufficiently large $k$. We state several open questions.Comment: 16 page

Bounded colorings of multipartite graphs and hypergraphs

Let $c$ be an edge-coloring of the complete $n$-vertex graph $K_n$. The problem of finding properly colored and rainbow Hamilton cycles in $c$ was initiated in 1976 by Bollob\'as and Erd\H os and has been extensively studied since then. Recently it was extended to the hypergraph setting by Dudek, Frieze and Ruci\'nski. We generalize these results, giving sufficient local (resp. global) restrictions on the colorings which guarantee a properly colored (resp. rainbow) copy of a given hypergraph $G$. We also study multipartite analogues of these questions. We give (up to a constant factor) optimal sufficient conditions for a coloring $c$ of the complete balanced $m$-partite graph to contain a properly colored or rainbow copy of a given graph $G$ with maximum degree $\Delta$. Our bounds exhibit a surprising transition in the rate of growth, showing that the problem is fundamentally different in the regimes $\Delta \gg m$ and $\Delta \ll m$ Our main tool is the framework of Lu and Sz\'ekely for the space of random bijections, which we extend to product spaces

Computing Minimum Rainbow and Strong Rainbow Colorings of Block Graphs

A path in an edge-colored graph $G$ is rainbow if no two edges of it are colored the same. The graph $G$ 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 $G$ is strongly rainbow-connected. The minimum number of colors needed to make $G$ rainbow-connected is known as the rainbow connection number of $G$, and is denoted by $\text{rc}(G)$. Similarly, the minimum number of colors needed to make $G$ strongly rainbow-connected is known as the strong rainbow connection number of $G$, and is denoted by $\text{src}(G)$. We prove that for every $k \geq 3$, deciding whether $\text{src}(G) \leq k$ 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 $n$-vertex split graph with a factor of $n^{1/2-\epsilon}$ for any $\epsilon > 0$ 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