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Star multigraphs with three vertices of maximum degree

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

A. G. Chetwynd
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, University of Lancaster
A. J. W. Hilton
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, University of Reading

Extract

The graphs we consider here are either simple graphs, that is they have no loops or multiple edges, or are multigraphs, that is they may have more than one edge joining a pair of vertices, but again have no loops. In particular we shall consider a special kind of multigraph, called a star-multigraph: this is a multigraph which contains a vertex v*, called the star-centre, which is incident with each non-simple edge. An edge-colouring of a multigraph G is a map ø: E(G)→, where is a set of colours and E(G) is the set of edges of G, such that no two edges receiving the same colour have a vertex in common. The chromatic index, or edge-chromatic numberχ′(G) of G is the least value of || for which an edge-colouring of G exists. Generalizing a well-known theorem of Vizing [14], we showed in [6] that, for a star-multigraph G,

where Δ(G) denotes the maximum degree (that is, the maximum number of edges incident with a vertex) of G. Star-multigraphs for which χ′(G) = Δ(G) are said to be Class 1, and otherwise they are Class 2.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge Philosophical Society 1986

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References

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