1. Introduction
Throughout the paper, only undirected simple finite graphs are
considered. For undefined terminology and notation, we follow [8]. Let be a graph. We will denote by and the vertex and edge
set of , respectively. The
distance between two vertices will be denoted by .
Graph labeling has been an intriguing topic, extensively studied over
the last six decades. To date, over graph labelings techniques have been
developed in over papers [11], one of which
is a distance antimagic labeling, firstly established by Kamatchi and
Arumugam [14]. A bijection
is said to be a distance antimagic labeling of a graph if the vertex weights, given
by are all distinct, where , the open neighborhood of
, is the set of all vertices
adjacent to . A distance
antimagic graph is a graph that has a distance antimagic
labeling.
Simanjuntak et al. [16] introduced a more
generalized concept, called a -antimagic labeling, where is a non-empty subset of the set . Here, the
difference is that the weight of a vertex is now defined as
where is
the -neighborhood of
. A graph that admits a -antimagic labeling is called -antimagic. Notably, a -antimagic graph is corresponds to a
distance antimagic graph. Some graph families have been proved to be
-antimagic, among others, see
[9,12,13,14,16,17,24].
Instead of looking at bijection type labelings, Chartrand et al.
[7]
considered an edge -labeling of
a graph , where distinct edges may
receive an identical label, such that the vertex weights, are
all distinct. They named such labelings irregular assignments
and the irregularity strength, , is the minimum positive
integer such that has an irregular assignment using
labels not exceeding . This topic
has gained significant interest, with numerous papers published; see
[2,3,15]
for some recent results.
Combining distance-based labelings and irregular assignments, Slamin
[18] introduced a
non-inclusive distance irregular -labeling of a graph as a mapping
such that for every two distinct vertices there is , where is the
weight of a vertex . The
non-inclusive distance irregularity strength, , of is the smallest integer such that has a non-inclusive distance irregular
labeling. There are not many graphs whose non-inclusive distance
irregularity strengths are known. Among those that are known include
paths, complete graphs, cycles, wheels, fan and book graphs [5,18],
disjoint union of paths, suns, helms and friendships [20].
Later on, Bača et al. [4] modified such a labeling and
introduced an inclusive distance irregular labeling of graphs.
In this case, the label of the vertex is also included in the
computation of its vertex weight, while the non-inclusive is not.
Furthermore, the two labelings were generalized by Bong et al. [6] to
non-inclusive and inclusive -distance irregular labelings,
where is an integer arbitrarily
taken from up to the diameter of
the graph. A (non-)inclusive -distance irregular labeling is also
called a (non-)inclusive distance irregular labeling. For more
information on these subjects one can see [19,21,22,23].
In this paper, we propose a new invariant, called a -irregular labeling, which generalizes
the previous labelings mentioned in [4,16,18].
This generalization is analogous to -antimagic labelings by Simanjuntak et
al. [16].
The formal definition is provided below.
Definition 1.1.
Let be a graph with diameter
. For a non-empty
set of distances
and a positive integer , a
function is
called a -irregular -labeling of if for every two distinct vertices , where the weight of a vertex
is defined as
We set if . The -irregularity strength of , denoted by , is the minimum such that admits a -irregular labeling. If such an integer
does not exist then we define
.
In a case when is
disconnected, we have that , and . Suppose that
, , be the components of ,, and . Then .
Moreover, from Definition 1.1,
it follows that
A -irregular labeling
is a non-inclusive distance irregular labeling.
A -irregular labeling
is an inclusive distance irregular labeling.
For , a
-irregular labeling
is a non-inclusive -distance
irregular labeling.
For , a
-irregular labeling
is an inclusive -distance
irregular labeling.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we present fundamental properties of
-irregularity strength for
arbitrary graphs. In Section 3, we
compute the exact values on this parameter for certain graphs with small
diameter. Section 4
addresses graphs with small maximum degree. Finally, Section 5 presents concluding
remarks.
2. Basic properties
We start with the following theorem which provides the necessary and
sufficient conditions for a graph to possess finite -irregularity strength.
Theorem 2.1.
Let be a graph. Then if and only if
there exist two distinct vertices such that . Moreover, if then .
Proof. Let be two
vertices of with . Then, in any vertex
labeling of , meaning that can not be -irregular.
Now suppose that for every two distinct vertices . Let us denote the vertices
of arbitrarily by the symbols
. Define a
vertex -labeling
of as follows: We define a labeling such that where and . Then,
To prove that all the vertex weights are distinct, it suffices to
show that the sums are
all distinct for . However, this is
evident if we consider that the ordered -tuple
corresponds to the binary code representation of the sum (1). Because for every two distinct
vertices we can get
that the -tuples are distinct
for distinct vertices. Hence . 
In a non-trivial graph , it is
evident that if then
for any two
vertices , and so by
Theorem 2.1
has no -irregular labeling. Hence, the next
corollary holds.
Corollary 2.2. .
Let be a non-trivial graph. Then .
For a graph and a set of
distances , the
complement of , denoted
by , is a set in which
and . In the
next theorem, we give a relationship between -irregularity strength and -irregularity strength of graphs.
Theorem 2.3.
Let be a non-empty graph. Then
if and only if
.
If is connected and then .
Let be a disconnected graph with
components for
, and . If there
exists a -irregular -labeling of with the property that for every two
distinct vertices and
, , then .
Proof. (a) If then by Theorem 2.1
there exist two distinct vertices such that . If is connected then and so by Theorem 2.1.
Next, let be disconnected with
components for
some . If for some , then thus by Theorem 2.1.
If and with
for , then , and so .
As is a non-empty graph, we may
assume that contains at least
two vertices. Indeed, for every two distinct vertices , ,
hence by
Theorem 2.1.
Conversely, if , similar
reasoning shows that .
(b) Let be
connected and . Let be a -irregular -labeling of . We define a new vertex labeling of in such a way that
We show that is a
-irregular -labeling of .
Evidently
for all . For the vertex
weights under the labeling we have
Note that the sums are distinct for each since is -irregular. This implies that for every two distinct
vertices , and so .
Since
we have according
to (1). Then, by
similar arguments, we can prove that .
Therefore .
(c) Let be a
disconnected graph with components for , and . Assume be a -irregular -labeling of satisfying the stated condition. Define
a new vertex labeling
of such that
We shall show that
is a -irregular -labeling of .
Clearly
for all . Let us consider
the weight of any vertex in the
component , , under the labeling . We have
Consider any two distinct vertices . Evidently if and
are in the same component then
since . Now, suppose that and are in the different components, say
and for . By the property in (3), it follows
that . So all the
vertex weights are distinct, and hence . 
It is evident that every -antimagic labeling is also a -irregular labeling. Consequently, we
derive the following property, which provides a better upper bound for
in a case that
is -antimagic.
Proposition 2.4.
Let be a -antimagic graph on vertices. Then .
The next proposition, which is straightforward, shows that the upper
bound in Proposition 2.4 is sharp.
Proposition 2.5.
Let be a graph on vertices. If one of the following
conditions holds:
is connected and ,
, , and , or
is disconnected, , , and ,
then is -antimagic and .
In the next theorem, we provide lower bounds for -irregularity strength of arbitrary
graphs. For a vertex in a graph
, the -degree, of is the cardinality of the set .
Theorem 2.6.
Let be a graph with . Let and be the minimum and the
maximum -degree of vertices of
, respectively. Let be the number of vertices in
with -degree for .
Then,
Proof. For some , let
In any -irregular labeling of a
graph , the smallest weight of
vertices with -degrees is at
least , and the largest
among them must be at least .
Such largest weight is obtained from the sum of at most labels. Therefore 
Notice that if , , and , ,
then we acquire the lower bounds for which were proved in
[21, Theorem 2.1], [19, Theorem 2], and [23, Lemma 2.1],
respectively.
The next two theorems demonstrate key properties that will be
instrumental in determining the -irregularity strength of a graph.
Theorem 2.7.
Let
be a graph with . Let be two distinct vertices of such that . Then and must receive distinct labels in any
-irregular labeling of . Furthermore, if is connected then and must receive distinct labels in any
-irregular labeling of .
Proof. Let be two
distinct vertices of with . As , and . Next, in any -irregular labeling of , and
Since and then .
Now let be connected. Then, in
any -irregular labeling of , and
Since and then . 
Theorem 2.8.
Let be a graph, , , and
. Let
be two distinct vertices of
such that and . If ,
and
then vertices in
and must receive
distinct labels in any -irregular
labeling of .
Proof. Let be two
distinct vertices of with and such that ,
and .
Let
and ,
where . Then, in
any -irregular labeling of , and
Since and then . 
Notice that when ,
Theorem 2.7 yields the
result mentioned in [18, Observation 2], and also when , , and , Theorem 2.8 provides the
property proved in [4, Lemma 3.1].
In [16], Simanjuntak et al. defined
a distance- graph of a
graph , denoted by , as a simple graph with the same
vertices as , where two vertices
are adjacent if their distance in
is an element of . Note that,
since is a simple graph, any
loops that would arise when
are excluded from the graph.
Theorem 2.9.
Let
be a graph.
If
does not contain then .
If
contains then .
Proof. Let be a
-irregular -labeling of a graph . We define a vertex labeling of in the following way. for any
vertex
corresponding to a vertex .
If , then we have
which
implies that .
Using similar arguments, we can also show that ,
so .
This proves (1).
Furthermore, if then
which
leads to .
Again, using similar reasoning, we can demonstrate that ,
thus .
This completes the proof of (2). 
3. Graphs with small diameter
This section showcases the -irregularity strength for families of
graphs with diameter at most three, including complete graphs, the join
graph , complete bipartite
graphs, and double stars, for all possible sets .
A complete graph is
the graph with vertices in which
any two of them are joined by an edge. Evidently, the graph is the only graph of diameter zero,
and the graph , , is the only graph with
diameter one.
A complete bipartite graph is the graph whose vertices can
be partitioned into two subsets
and with and , such that is an edge if and only if and . The graph , , , has diameter two. The
complete bipartite graph is
called a star, the only tree with diameter two.
The join product between two given graphs and , denoted by , is the graph obtained from and by joining an edge from every vertex of
to every vertex of . The graph has diameter one or two, with
diameter one if and only if and
are complete graphs. Therefore,
the graph has diameter two if
and only if is not a complete
graph.
A double star
is the graph obtained from two stars and by connecting the two vertices of
degrees and in and , respectively. The graph , , is the only tree
with diameter three.
We first examine complete graphs. It is evident that . We shall show that
is the only graph with -irregularity strength one. Beforehand,
let us prove in the next proposition a generalization of the well-known
property that a simple graph on vertices whose all the vertex degrees are distinct does not
exist.
Theorem 3.1. There is no simple graph on
vertices whose vertex
-degrees are all distinct.
Proof. Assume that such a graph exists. Note that the -degree of a vertex is at least and at most . Thus, numbers in the set have to be the -degree of vertices of .
We will show that cannot be a
vertex -degree. Assume otherwise,
that for some vertex . This means that , which forces to be connected and . But
then, this implies that
for any vertex , and
so , a contradiction.
Therefore the vertex -degrees of
must be .
Consider two distinct vertices with and
. Since , we get . This implies that , and so . However, this is impossible
since . Hence, the
statement holds. 
From Proposition 3.1
it follows that for any graph of
order , labeling all
vertices of with will always result in at least two
vertices with the same weight. This brings us to the characterization of
graphs with -irregularity strength
one.
Theorem 3.2. Let
be a graph. Then
if and only if
.
Question 3.3. Characterize all graphs with
-irregularity strength two.
For , the -irregularity strength of the complete
graph which can be directly
derived from Proposition 2.5
and Corollary 2.2, is presented in the
following theorem. Note that the cases when and were also proved in [18] and [4],
respectively.
Theorem 3.4 ([4,18]).
Let be a complete graph for
. Then
Next, we deal with the join graph . To begin, let us restate the
results on for
and .
Theorem 3.5. ([22]).
Let be a graph. If then .
Moreover, if then
Theorem 3.6 ([4]). Let be a graph with maximum degree . Then
Corollary 2.2, Proposition 2.5, and Theorems 2.3, 3.5 and 3.6 allow us to
completely obtained exact values on -irregularity strength for the graph
.
Theorem 3.7. Let
be a not complete graph on
vertices with maximum
degree
. Then
If
then .
If one of the following conditions is satisfied:
then .
If and
for every -irregular -labeling of , then .
If one of the following conditions is satisfied:
then .
Now, consider the complete bipartite graph for , . By Proposition 2.5, it is clear that .
From [4, Theorem 3.1] and
Theorem 2.3, we
know that
when , and
when . Moreover,
whenever , which
follows immediately from [18, Observation 1], Theorem 2.3 and
Corollary 2.2. Thus, we arrive at the
following theorem.
Theorem 3.8 [
4,18] Let
be a complete
bipartite graph for
,
. Then
Corollary 3.9.
Let be a star for . Then
We now focus on the double star. Let us denote the vertex and edge
set of the double star
respectively by
and .
Theorem 3.10 ([6])
Let be a double star for
. Then
Proof. Obviously, . Combining
this with Theorem 2.3,
. 
Lemma 3.12.
Let be a double star for . If
then .
Proof. From Theorems 2.3 and
3.10, we get
.
Let . By Theorem 2.8, and , , must receive distinct labels, thus .
Define a labeling
such that
It is easy to see that all vertex labels are at most . For the vertex weights we have
As , we get that ,
which implies that the vertex weights are all distinct. Therefore . By
combining this with Theorem 2.3 we
also have . 
Lemma 3.13.
Let be a double star for . If one of the
following conditions holds:
and
, or
and
,
then .
Proof. Let and
. Suppose that is a -irregular labeling of . By Theorem 2.7, for , so .
Assume that . Then ,
which leads to and .
As ,
the vertex weights are not distinct. Therefore, .
Let be a vertex labeling
of defined such that
Then we obtain the vertex weights as follows.
It is not difficult to verify that the vertex weights are distinct
and the labels used in the labeling are not greater than , which means that is a -irregular -labeling of for . Hence .
Furthermore, combining this with Theorem 2.3 we
also have for
.
Next, we have
by Theorems 2.3 and
3.10. 
Lemma 3.14.
Let be a double star for . If then .
Proof. Let .
Define a vertex labeling
of in the following way:
Obviously, the largest label that appears on the vertices is . Moreover, we have the following
vertex weights.
It is easy to see that the vertex weights are distinct. Therefore
.
Next, we shall show that . For a contradiction, assume that there is a -irregular -labeling of for . Then by Theorem 2.8, the following
properties hold:
We may assume, without loss of generality, that
and ,
where . Then
and
Since these sets are not disjoint, the vertex weights are not
distinct, a contradiction. Thus.
As
and we conclude that .
Furthermore, combining this with Theorem 2.3 we
get . 
Lemma 3.15.
Let be a double star for . If then .
Proof. Let .
Define a vertex labeling
of in the following way:
Then we get the following vertex weights.
It is not hard to show that the vertex weights are distinct and the
labels used in the labeling
are at most . This means that
is a -irregular -labeling of for . Therefore .
Next, we shall show that .
For a contradiction, assume that there exists a -irregular -labeling of for . Using Theorem 2.7, the
following properties must be hold:
Without loss of generality we may assume that
and ,
where .
Then and which implies that the vertex weights are not
distinct, a contradiction. Therefore .
Since , we get for . Moreover, combining this
with Theorem 2.3 we
also obtain for
. 
In the next theorem, we present -irregularity strength for the double
stars.
Theorem 3.16.
Let be a double star for
. Then
If then .
If
and then .
If one of
the following conditions is satisfied:
then .
If and then .
If and then .
If then .
If one of
the following conditions is satisfied:
then .
Proof. (1)-(5) follow from Lemmas
3.11, 3.12, 3.13, 3.14 and 3.15, respectively.
Similarly, (6)-(7) are derived by applying
Proposition 2.5, and Theorems 2.1
and 2.3. 
It is worth noting that, from Theorems 3.4 and 3.16, along
with Corollary 3.9, we have fully
characterized the -irregularity
strength for all non-trivial trees with diameter at most three, for all
possible sets .
Question 3.17. Find the
-irregularity strength
of all trees with diameter four for all possible
s.
4. Graphs with small maximum degree
This section explores the -irregularity strength of certain
graphs with maximum degree two, focusing particularly on the disjoint
union of paths and -regular
graphs, for a positive integer .
We begin by examining the -irregularity strength of the
disjoint union of paths for
and . For , the following theorem, established
in [18,20],
provides the result.
Theorem 4.1 [18,20].
Let be an disjoint union of a path on vertices for and . Then
In the next theorem, we determine -irregularity strength of for certain .
Theorem 4.2.
Let be an disjoint union of a path on vertices for and , and let . Then
.
For , .
if and
only if
Proof. (1) Evidently, .
Then by Theorem 2.9, we have .
(2) If then .
By Theorems 2.9 and 4.1,
(3) From Theorem 2.9 we know that
if
and only if .
Furthermore, by Theorem 2.1
we have that
if and only if
contains at least one component isomorphic to or at least two components isomorphic
to . Thus, if and
only if has at least
one component isomorphic to or
at least two components isomorphic to .
We have that
Clearly, contains
at least one component isomorphic to if and only if and has at least two
components isomorphic to if and
only if , , and . Therefore, combining
both conditions, we conclude that if and
only if 
Question 4.3.
Find
-irregularity strength
of
for other values of
not covered in Theorem 4.2.
Next, we address the -irregularity strength for -regular graphs, i.e., the disjoint
union of cycles. To achieve this, we first employ the irregularity
strength and edge irregularity strength of -regular graphs to obtain -irregularity strength of -regular graphs. Subsequently, we use
Theorem 2.9 to derive the
-irregularity strength of
-regular graphs. Recall that the
edge irregularity strength of a graph , denoted by , is the minimum such that an assignment of integers
to the vertices of
implies that distinct edges have
distinct weights, where the edge weight is the sum of labels of
its two end vertices [1].
We begin by stating the theorem of Faudree et al. [10], which
determines the irregularity strength of -regular graphs.
Theorem 4.4. ([10]).
Let be a -regular graph on vertices. Then
Moreover,
If is the disjoint union
of triangles then
If has no triangle then
In the next theorem, we prove that the irregularity strength and the
edge irregularity strength of -regular graphs are equivalent.
Theorem 4.5.
Let
be a -regular graph on vertices. Then .
Consequently,
Moreover,
If is the disjoint union
of triangles then
If has no triangle then
Proof. Let be a -regular graph on vertices. In any edge irregular
labeling of , if we shift the
label of each vertex to the edge incident to it in the clockwise
direction, we obtain an irregular labeling of . This demonstrates that .
Conversely, in any irregular labeling of , shifting the label of each edge to the
vertex incident to it in the clockwise direction results in an edge
irregular labeling of , implying
that .
Consequently, . The rest of
the theorem follows immediately from Theorem 4.4. 
Let be a
-regular graph on vertices containing triangles and no square. Evidently,
is a
-regular graph with vertices. Moreover, it is not hard to
know that every -irregular
labeling of induces an edge
irregular labeling of , and every edge irregular labeling of induces a -irregular labeling of , meaning that -irregularity strength of and edge irregularity strength of are
equivalent.
Further, if then is
the disjoint union of triangles , and if and has no hexagon then is a -regular graph without any triangle.
With the above facts in hand along with Theorem 4.5 we obtain the
following.
Theorem 4.6.
Let
be a -regular graph on vertices containing triangles and no square for and . Then
.
Consequently,
Moreover,
If then
If and has no hexagon then
The next theorem provides -irregularity strength of the
isomorphic copies of cycles
for .
Theorem 4.7.
Let be an disjoint union of a cycle on vertices for and . Then
.
.
For
,
For ,
Proof. By simple observation,
and .
Then by Theorem 2.9, we find that
and .
This proves (1) and (2).
Next, let . If then .
By Theorems 2.9 and 4.6, we obtain
If then .
Again, by Theorems 2.9 and 4.6, we have
This proves 3.
Now, for ,
we observe that is a
-regular graph without any cycle
for . By Theorems 2.9 and 4.6, we
conclude that Hence (4) is proved. 
Under certain conditions, Theorem 4.7 can be extended to
-regular graphs that contain
non-isomorphic cycle components.
Theorem 4.8.
Let be a
-regular graph on vertices with components such that , and
for some . Then
For ,
.
For ,
In particular, if for
some , and for
every , , then
For ,
Proof. (1) If
then contains a square,
and so .
If
then for
any two distinct vertices and
in the component , thus .
(2) If
then is a -regular graph of order containing triangles and no square for some . Therefore, by Theorems 2.9 and 4.6,
For some , let , and
for every , , let .
Then , where .
Thus, by Theorems 2.9 and 4.6,
(3) If
then is a -regular graphs with vertices containing no cycle , . By Theorems 2.9 and 4.6, 
Question 4.9.Find the
-irregularity
strength of arbitrary
-regular
graphs for other values of
not
mentioned in Theorems 4.7 and 4.8.
In this work, we introduced a -irregular labeling as a generalization
of non-inclusive and inclusive -distance irregular labeling of graphs.
We derived fundamental properties on -irregularity strength for arbitrary
graphs, and presented exact values on this parameter for specific
families of graphs with small diameter or small maximum degree.
The authors of [16] posed a conjecture
below.
Conjecture 5.1 ([16]) A graph
is -antimagic if and only if for every two distinct
vertices .
Note that if Conjecture 5.1 holds, then for a
graph with finite -irregularity strength, the inequality
holds as well. Motivated by this observation and the results presented
in Proposition 2.5, we believe that the
following conjecture is true.
Conjecture 5.2 Let
be a graph on
vertices with
. Then
with the
equality if and only if one of the following conditions holds:
is connected and ,
, , and , or
is disconnected, , , and .
Acknowledgements
This work has been supported by Direktorat Riset, Teknologi, dan
Pengabdian kepada Masyarakat, Direktorat Jenderal Pendidikan Tinggi,
Riset, dan Teknologi, Kementerian Pendidikan, Kebudayaan, Riset, dan
Teknologi Republik Indonesia under the grant “Penelitian Fundamental
Reguler 2024” and by Institut Teknologi Bandung under the grant “Program
Riset International 2023/2024”. The first author gratefully acknowledges
the support provided by the Excellent Scholarship Program of the
Indonesian Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology.