On the Erdos-Faber-Lovasz Conjecture

John Mitchem1, Randolph L.Schmidt2
1Mathematics Department San Jose State University, San Jose, CA 95192
2RSE Consulting, Mountain View, CA 94043

Abstract

In \(1972\), Erdős, Faber, and Lovász made the now famous conjecture: If a graph \(G\) consists of \(n\) copies of the complete graph \(K_n\), such that any two copies have at most one common vertex (such graphs are called EFL graphs), then \(G\) is \(n\)-colorable. In this paper, we show that the conjecture is true for two different classes of EFL graphs. Furthermore, a new shorter proof of the conjecture is given for a third class of EFL graphs.