Injective edge coloring of graphs

Abstract

Three edges $e_{1}, e_{2}$ and $e_{3}$ in a graph $G$ are consecutive if they form a path (in this order) or a cycle of lengths three. An injective edge coloring of a graph $G = (V,E)$ is a coloring $c$ of the edges of $G$ such that if $e_{1}, e_{2}$ and $e_{3}$ are consecutive edges in $G$, then $c(e_{1})\neq c(e_3)$. The injective edge coloring number $\chi_{i}^{'}(G)$ is the minimum number of colors permitted in such a coloring. In this paper, exact values of $\chi_{i}^{'}(G)$ for several classes of graphs are obtained, upper and lower bounds for $\chi_{i}^{'}(G)$ are introduced and it is proven that checking whether $\chi_{i}^{'}(G)= k$ is NP-complete.