English

Distinguishing symmetric digraphs by proper arc-colourings of type I

Combinatorics 2025-06-18 v1

Abstract

A symmetric digraph G\overleftrightarrow{G} is obtained from a simple graph GG by replacing each edge uvuv with a pair of opposite arcs uv\vec{uv}, vu\overrightarrow{vu}. An arc-colouring cc of a digraph G\overleftrightarrow{G} is distinguishing if the only automorphism of G\overleftrightarrow{G} preserving the colouring cc is the identity. Behzad introduced the proper arc-colouring of type I as an arc-colouring such that any two consecutive arcs uv\overrightarrow{uv}, vw\overrightarrow{vw} have distinct colours. We establish an optimal upper bound 2Δ(G)\lceil 2\sqrt{\Delta(G)}\rceil for the least number of colours in a distinguishing proper colouring of type I of a connected symmetric digraph G\overleftrightarrow{G}. Furthermore, we prove that the same upper bound 2Δ(G)\lceil 2\sqrt{\Delta(G)}\rceil is optimal for another type of proper colouring of G\overleftrightarrow{G}, when only monochromatic 2-paths are forbidden.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2506.13979,
  title  = {Distinguishing symmetric digraphs by proper arc-colourings of type I},
  author = {Rafał Kalinowski and Monika Pilśniak and Magdalena Prorok},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.13979},
  year   = {2025}
}