Rainbow Connection of Sparse Random Graphs

  • Alan Frieze
  • Charalampos E. Tsourakakis
Keywords: Random Graphs, Rainbow Connection

Abstract

An edge colored graph $G$ is rainbow edge connected if any two vertices are connected by a path whose edges have distinct colors. The rainbow connectivity of a connected graph $G$, denoted by $rc(G)$, is the smallest number of colors that are needed in order to make $G$ rainbow connected.

In this work we study the rainbow connectivity of binomial random graphs at the connectivity threshold $p=\frac{\log n+\omega}{n}$ where $\omega=\omega(n)\to\infty$ and ${\omega}=o(\log{n})$ and of random $r$-regular graphs where $r \geq 3$ is a fixed integer. Specifically, we prove that the rainbow connectivity $rc(G)$ of $G=G(n,p)$ satisfies $rc(G) \sim \max\{Z_1,\text{diam}(G)\}$ with high probability (whp). Here $Z_1$ is the number of vertices in $G$ whose degree equals 1 and the diameter of $G$ is asymptotically equal to $\frac{\log n}{\log\log n}$ whp. Finally, we prove that the rainbow connectivity $rc(G)$ of the random $r$-regular graph $G=G(n,r)$ whp satisfies $rc(G) =O(\log^{2\theta_r}{n})$ where $\theta_r=\frac{\log (r-1)}{\log (r-2)}$ when $r\geq 4$ and $rc(G) =O(\log^4n)$ whp when $r=3$.
Published
2012-10-18
Article Number
P5