In graph theory, a path in an edge-colored graph is said to be rainbow if no color repeats on it. A graph is said to be rainbow-connected (or rainbow colored) if there is a rainbow path between each pair of its vertices. If there is a rainbow shortest path between each pair of vertices, the graph is said to be strongly rainbow-connected (or strongly rainbow colored).[1]

Rainbow coloring of a wheel graph, with three colors. Every two non-adjacent vertices can be connected by a rainbow path, either directly through the center vertex (bottom left) or by detouring around one triangle to avoid a repeated edge color (bottom right).

Definitions and bounds

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The rainbow connection number of a graph   is the minimum number of colors needed to rainbow-connect  , and is denoted by  . Similarly, the strong rainbow connection number of a graph   is the minimum number of colors needed to strongly rainbow-connect  , and is denoted by  . Clearly, each strong rainbow coloring is also a rainbow coloring, while the converse is not true in general.

It is easy to observe that to rainbow-connect any connected graph  , we need at least   colors, where   is the diameter of   (i.e. the length of the longest shortest path). On the other hand, we can never use more than   colors, where   denotes the number of edges in  . Finally, because each strongly rainbow-connected graph is rainbow-connected, we have that  .

The following are the extremal cases:[1]

  •   if and only if   is a complete graph.
  •   if and only if   is a tree.

The above shows that in terms of the number of vertices, the upper bound   is the best possible in general. In fact, a rainbow coloring using   colors can be constructed by coloring the edges of a spanning tree of   in distinct colors. The remaining uncolored edges are colored arbitrarily, without introducing new colors. When   is 2-connected, we have that  .[2] Moreover, this is tight as witnessed by e.g. odd cycles.

Exact rainbow or strong rainbow connection numbers

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The rainbow or the strong rainbow connection number has been determined for some structured graph classes:

  •  , for each integer  , where   is the cycle graph.[1]
  •  , for each integer  , and  , for  , where   is the wheel graph.[1]

Complexity

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The problem of deciding whether   for a given graph   is NP-complete.[3] Because   if and only if  ,[1] it follows that deciding if   is NP-complete for a given graph  .

Variants and generalizations

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Chartrand, Okamoto and Zhang[4] generalized the rainbow connection number as follows. Let   be an edge-colored nontrivial connected graph of order  . A tree   is a rainbow tree if no two edges of   are assigned the same color. Let   be a fixed integer with  . An edge coloring of   is called a  -rainbow coloring if for every set   of   vertices of  , there is a rainbow tree in   containing the vertices of  . The  -rainbow index   of   is the minimum number of colors needed in a  -rainbow coloring of  . A  -rainbow coloring using   colors is called a minimum  -rainbow coloring. Thus   is the rainbow connection number of  .

Rainbow connection has also been studied in vertex-colored graphs. This concept was introduced by Krivelevich and Yuster.[5] Here, the rainbow vertex-connection number of a graph  , denoted by  , is the minimum number of colors needed to color   such that for each pair of vertices, there is a path connecting them whose internal vertices are assigned distinct colors.

See also

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Notes

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References

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  • Chartrand, Gary; Johns, Garry L.; McKeon, Kathleen A.; Zhang, Ping (2008), "Rainbow connection in graphs", Mathematica Bohemica, 133 (1): 85–98, doi:10.21136/MB.2008.133947.
  • Chartrand, Gary; Okamoto, Futaba; Zhang, Ping (2010), "Rainbow trees in graphs and generalized connectivity", Networks, 55 (4): NA, doi:10.1002/net.20339, S2CID 7505197.
  • Chakraborty, Sourav; Fischer, Eldar; Matsliah, Arie; Yuster, Raphael (2011), "Hardness and algorithms for rainbow connection", Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, 21 (3): 330–347, arXiv:0809.2493, doi:10.1007/s10878-009-9250-9, S2CID 10874392.
  • Krivelevich, Michael; Yuster, Raphael (2010), "The Rainbow Connection of a Graph Is (at Most) Reciprocal to Its Minimum Degree", Journal of Graph Theory, 63 (3): 185–191, doi:10.1002/jgt.20418.
  • Li, Xueliang; Shi, Yongtang; Sun, Yuefang (2013), "Rainbow Connections of Graphs: A Survey", Graphs and Combinatorics, 29 (1): 1–38, arXiv:1101.5747, doi:10.1007/s00373-012-1243-2, S2CID 253898232.
  • Li, Xueliang; Sun, Yuefang (2012), Rainbow connections of graphs, Springer, p. 103, ISBN 978-1-4614-3119-0.
  • Ekstein, Jan; Holub, Přemysl; Kaiser, Tomáš; Koch, Maria; Camacho, Stephan Matos; Ryjáček, Zdeněk; Schiermeyer, Ingo (2013), "The rainbow connection number of 2-connected graphs", Discrete Mathematics, 313 (19): 1884–1892, arXiv:1110.5736, doi:10.1016/j.disc.2012.04.022, S2CID 16596310.