The Linear \(2\)-arboricity of Complete Bipartite Graphs

A forest in which every component is a path is called a path forest. A family of path forests whose edge sets form a partition of the edge set of a graph \(G\) is called a path decomposition of a graph \(G\). The minimum number of path forests in a path decomposition of a graph \(G\) is the linear arboricity of \(G\) and denoted by \(\ell(G)\). If we restrict the number of edges in each path to be at most \(k\) then we obtain a special decomposition. The minimum number of path forests in this type of decomposition is called the linear \(k\)-arboricity and denoted by \(\ell\alpha_k(G)\). In this paper we concentrate on the special type of path decomposition and we obtain the answers for \(\ell\alpha_2(G)\) when \(G\) is \(K_{n,n}\). We note here that if we restrict the size to be one, the number \(\ell\alpha_1(G)\) is just the chromatic index of \(G\).