The $(k,\ell)$-rainbow index of random graphs

Qingqiong Cai, Xueliang Li, Jiangli Song

Published 2013-10-10Version 1

A tree in an edge colored graph is said to be a rainbow tree if no two edges on the tree share the same color. Given two positive integers $k$, $\ell$ with $k\geq 3$, the \emph{$(k,\ell)$-rainbow index} $rx_{k,\ell}(G)$ of $G$ is the minimum number of colors needed in an edge-coloring of $G$ such that for any set $S$ of $k$ vertices of $G$, there exist $\ell$ internally disjoint rainbow trees connecting $S$. This concept was introduced by Chartrand et. al., and there have been very few related results about it. In this paper, We establish a sharp threshold function for $rx_{k,\ell}(G_{n,p})\leq k$ and $rx_{k,\ell}(G_{n,M})\leq k,$ respectively, where $G_{n,p}$ and $G_{n,M}$ are the usually defined random graphs.