Every 4-regular graph is acyclically edge-6-colorable

Abstract

An acyclic edge coloring of a graph $G$ is a proper edge coloring such that no bichromatic cycles are produced. The acyclic chromatic index $a^{\prime }(G)$ of $G$ is the smallest integer $k$ such that $G$ has an acyclic edge coloring using $k$ colors. Fiam$\check{\mathrm{c}}$ik (1978) and later Alon, Sudakov and Zaks (2001) conjectured that $a^{\prime }(G)\le \Delta +2$ for any simple graph $G$ with maximum degree $\Delta$. Basavaraju and Chandran (2009) showed that every graph $G$ with $\Delta =4$, which is not 4-regular, satisfies the conjecture. In this paper, we settle the 4-regular case, i.e., we show that every 4-regular graph $G$ has $a^{\prime }(G)\le 6$.

24 pages, 9 figures