Discrete Mathematics and Combinatorics Commons^™

Edge Colorings Of Graphs On Surfaces And Star Edge Colorings Of Sparse Graphs, Katherine M. Horacek

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

In my dissertation, I present results on two types of edge coloring problems for graphs.

For each surface Σ, we define ∆(Σ) = max{∆(G)| G is a class two graph with maximum degree ∆(G) that can be embedded in Σ}. Hence Vizing’s Planar Graph Conjecture can be restated as ∆(Σ) = 5 if Σ is a sphere. For a surface Σ with characteristic χ(Σ) ≤ 0, it is known ∆(Σ) ≥ H(χ(Σ))−1, where H(χ(Σ)) is the Heawood number of the surface, and if the Euler char- acteristic χ(Σ) ∈ {−7, −6, . . . , −1, 0}, ∆(Σ) is already …