THE RANGE OF r-MAXIMUM INDEX OF GRAPHS

For a connected graph G, an r-maximum edge-coloring is an edge-coloring f defined on E(G) such that at every vertex v with $d_G(v){\geq}r$ exactly r incident edges to v receive the maximum color. The r-maximum index $x^{\prime}_r(G)$ is the least number of required colors to have an r-maximum edge coloring of G. In this paper, we show how the r-maximum index is affected by adding an edge or a vertex. As a main result, we show that for each $r{\geq}3$ the r-maximum index function over the graphs admitting an r-maximum edge-coloring is unbounded and the range is the set of natural numbers. In other words, for each $r{\geq}3$ and $k{\geq}1$ there is a family of graphs G(r, k) with $x^{\prime}_r(G(r,k))=k$. Also, we construct a family of graphs not admitting an r-maximum edge-coloring with arbitrary maximum degrees: for any fixed $r{\geq}3$, there is an infinite family of graphs ${\mathcal{F}}_r=\{G_k:k{\geq}r+1\}$, where for each $k{\geq}r+1$ there is no r-maximum edge-coloring of $G_k$ and ${\Delta}(G_k)=k$.