English

The interval coloring impropriety of planar graphs

Combinatorics 2024-08-09 v1

Abstract

For a graph GG, we call an edge coloring of GG an \textit{improper} \textit{interval edge coloring} if for every vV(G)v\in V(G) the colors, which are integers, of the edges incident with vv form an integral interval. The \textit{interval coloring impropriety} of GG, denoted by μint(G)\mu_{int}(G), is the smallest value kk such that GG has an improper interval edge coloring where at most kk edges of GG with a common endpoint have the same color. The purpose of this note is to communicate solutions to two previous questions on interval coloring impropriety, mainly regarding planar graphs. First, we prove μint(G)2\mu_{int}(G) \leq 2 for every outerplanar graph GG. This confirms the conjecture by Casselgren and Petrosyan in the affirmative. Secondly, we prove that for each k2k\geq 2, the interval coloring impropriety of kk-trees is unbounded. This refutes the conjecture by Carr, Cho, Crawford, Ir\v{s}i\v{c}, Pai and Robinson.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2408.04393,
  title  = {The interval coloring impropriety of planar graphs},
  author = {Seunghun Lee},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.04393},
  year   = {2024}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T18:07:36.652Z