Minimum degree and size conditions for the proper connection number of graphs

TL;DR

This paper establishes new minimum degree and size conditions under which the proper connection number of a graph is at most a given value, refining previous bounds and providing specific exceptions.

Contribution

It introduces improved size and degree conditions for bounding the proper connection number, including new bounds and conjectures for specific cases.

Findings

Derived size conditions ensuring pc(G) ≤ k for connected graphs.

Identified exceptions for pc(G) ≤ 2 when δ=2, with specific graph structures.

Proposed conjectures for pc(G) ≤ 2 when δ ≥ 3.

Abstract

An edge-coloured graph $G$ is called $properly$ $connected$ if every two vertices are connected by a proper path. The $proper$ $connection$ $number$ of a connected graph $G$, denoted by $pc(G)$, is the smallest number of colours that are needed in order to make $G$ properly connected. Susan A. van Aardt et al. gave a sufficient condition for the proper connection number to be at most $k$ in terms of the size of graphs. In this note, %optimizes the boundary of the number of edges %we study the $proper$ $connection$ $number$ is under the conditions of adding the minimum degree and optimizing the number of edges. our main result is the following, by adding a minimum degree condition: Let $G$ be a connected graph of order $n$, $k\geq3$. If $|E(G)|\geq \binom{n-m-(k+1-m)(\delta+1)}{2} +(k+1-m)\binom{\delta+1}{2}+k+2$, then $pc(G)\leq k$, where $m$ takes the value $t$ if $\delta=1$ and $\lfloor \frac{k}{\delta-1} \rfloor$ if $\delta\geq2$. Furthermore, if $k=2$ and $\delta=2$, %(i.e., $|E(G)|\geq \binom{n-5}{2} +7$) $pc(G)\leq 2$, except $G\in \{G_{1}, G_{n}\}$ ($n\geq8$), where $G_{1}=K_{1}\vee 3K_{2}$ and $G_{n}$ is obtained by taking a complete graph $K_{n-5}$ and $K_{1}\vee (2K_{2}$) with an arbitrary vertex of $K_{n-5}$ and a vertex with $d(v)=4$ in $K_{1}\vee (2K_{2}$) being joined. If $k=2$, $\delta \geq 3$, we conjecture $pc(G)\leq 2$, where $m$ takes the value $1$ if $\delta=3$ and $0$ if $\delta\geq4$ in the assumption.