Neighbor-Distinguishing Vertex Colorings of Graphs

Gary Chartrand1, Futaba Okamoto2, Ping Zhang3
1Department of Mathematics Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, MI 49008
2Mathematics Department University of Wisconsin – La Crosse La Crosse, WI 54601
3Department of Mathematics Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, MI 49008

Abstract

Recently, four new vertex colorings of graphs (in which adjacent vertices may be colored the same) were introduced for the purpose of distinguishing every pair of adjacent vertices. For each graph and for each of these four colorings, the minimum number of required colors never exceeds the chromatic number of the graph. In this paper, we summarize some of the results obtained on these colorings and introduce some relationships among them.

Keywords: neighbor-distinguishing coloring, set coloring, metric color- ing, multiset coloring, sigma coloring. AMS Subject Classification: 05C15, 05C20.