English

Quasi-majority neighbor sum distinguishing edge-colorings

Combinatorics 2025-11-04 v1

Abstract

In this paper, a kk-edge-coloring of GG is any mapping c:E(G)[k]c:E(G)\longrightarrow [k]. The edge-coloring cc of GG naturally defines a vertex-coloring σc:V(G)N\sigma_{c}: V(G) \to \mathbb{N}, where σc(v)=uNG(v)c(vu)\sigma_{c}(v)=\sum_{u\in N_G(v)}c(vu) for every vertex vV(G)v\in V(G). The edge-coloring cc is said to be neighbor sum distinguishing if it results in a proper vertex-coloring σc\sigma_{c}, which that σc(u)σc(v)\sigma_{c}(u) \neq \sigma_{c}(v) for every edge uvuv in GG. We investigate neighbor sum distinguishing edge-colorings with local constraints, where the edge-coloring is quasi-majority at each vertex. Specifically, every vertex vv is incident to at most d(v)/2\left\lceil d(v)/2 \right\rceil edges of one color. This type of coloring is referred to as quasi-majority neighbor sum distinguishing edge-coloring. The minimum number of colors required for a graph to have a quasi-majority neighbor sum distinguishing edge-coloring is called the quasi-majority neighbor sum distinguishing index. A graph is nice if it has no component isomorphic to K2K_2. We prove that any nice graph admits a quasi-majority neighbor sum distinguishing edge-coloring using at most 12 colors. This bound can be improved for bipartite graphs and graphs with a maximum degree of at most 4. Specifically, we show that every nice bipartite graph can be colored with 6 colors, and every nice graph with a maximum degree of at most 4 can be colored with 7 colors. Additionally, we determine the exact value of the quasi-majority neighbor sum distinguishing index for complete graphs, complete bipartite graphs, and trees. We also consider majority neighbor sum distinguishing edge-colorings, that is, when each vertex is incident to at most d(v)/2d(v)/2 edges with the same color.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.01835,
  title  = {Quasi-majority neighbor sum distinguishing edge-colorings},
  author = {Rafał Kalinowski and Monika Pilśniak and Elżbieta Sidorowicz and Elżbieta Turowska},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.01835},
  year   = {2025}
}