Color degree and color neighborhood union conditions for long heterochromatic paths in edge-colored graphs

TL;DR

This paper improves bounds on the length of heterochromatic paths in edge-colored graphs under color degree and neighborhood union conditions, confirming a conjecture and refining previous results with a simpler approach.

Contribution

It introduces a simpler method to establish tighter lower bounds on heterochromatic path lengths, confirming Saito's conjecture and enhancing prior bounds.

Findings

Heterochromatic path length at least eil(2k/3)+1 for k

Path length at least loor((2s+4)/5) under neighborhood union condition

Simpler proof technique for improved bounds

Abstract

Let $G$ be an edge-colored graph. A heterochromatic (rainbow, or multicolored) path of $G$ is such a path in which no two edges have the same color. Let $d^c(v)$ denote the color degree and $CN(v)$ denote the color neighborhood of a vertex $v$ of $G$. In a previous paper, we showed that if $d^c(v)\geq k$ (color degree condition) for every vertex $v$ of $G$, then $G$ has a heterochromatic path of length at least $\lceil\frac{k+1}{2}\rceil$, and if $|CN(u)\cup CN(v)|\geq s$ (color neighborhood union condition) for every pair of vertices $u$ and $v$ of $G$, then $G$ has a heterochromatic path of length at least $\lceil\frac{s}{3}\rceil+1$. Later, in another paper we first showed that if $k\leq 7$, $G$ has a heterochromatic path of length at least $k-1$, and then, based on this we use induction on $k$ and showed that if $k\geq 8$, then $G$ has a heterochromatic path of length at least $\lceil\frac{3k}{5}\rceil+1$. In the present paper, by using a simpler approach we further improve the result by showing that if $k\geq 8$, $G$ has a heterochromatic path of length at least $\lceil\frac{2k}{3}\rceil+1$, which confirms a conjecture by Saito. We also improve a previous result by showing that under the color neighborhood union condition, $G$ has a heterochromatic path of length at least $\lfloor\frac{2s+4}{5}\rfloor$.