Multicolor Ramsey Number for Double Stars

For a graph $H$ and an integer $k\ge1$, let $r(H;k)$ and $r_\ell(H;k)$ denote the $k$-color Ramsey number and list Ramsey number of $H$, respectively. Alon, Buci\'c, Kalvari, Kuperwasser and Szab\'o in 2021 initiated the systematic study of list Ramsey numbers of graphs and hypergraphs, and conjectured that $r(K_{1,n};k)$ and $r_\ell(K_{1,n};k)$ are always equal. Motivated by their work, we study the $k$-color Ramsey number for double stars $S(n,m)$, where $n\ge m\ge1$. To the best of our knowledge, little is known on the exact value of $r(S(n,m);k)$ when $k\ge3$. A classic result of Erd\H{o}s and Graham from 1975 asserts that $r(T;k)>k(n-1)+1$ for every tree $T$ with $n\ge 1$ edges and $k$ sufficiently large such that $n$ divides $k-1$. Using a folklore double counting argument in set system and the edge chromatic number of complete graphs, we prove that if $k$ is odd and $n$ is sufficiently large compared with $m$ and $k$, then $$r(S(n,m);k)=kn+m+2.$$ This is a step in our effort to determine whether $r(S(n,m);k)$ and $r_\ell(S(n,m);k)$ are always equal, which remains wide open. We also prove that $r(S^m_n;k)=k(n-1)+m+2$ if $k$ is odd and $n$ is sufficiently large compared with $m$ and $k$, where $1\le m\le n$ and $S^m_n$ is obtained from $K_{1, n}$ by subdividing $m$ edges each exactly once. We end the paper with some observations towards the list Ramsey number for $S(n,m)$ and $S^m_n$.