Anti-Ramsey number for perfect matchings in 3-regular bipartite graphs

Abstract

The anti-Ramsey number AR(G,H) is the maximum number of colors in an edge-coloring of a graph in the family G without any rainbow copy of H. The anti-Ramsey number for matchings has been studied extensively in several graph families, while the problem for perfect matchings was only solved in complete graphs. The anti-Ramsey number of matchings in the family of regular bipartite graphs of order large enough was determined by Li and Xu. Jin improved their bounds on the order of 3-regular bipartite graphs. In this paper, we consider the problem for perfect matchings in 3-regular bipartite graphs. Let G be the family of 3-regular bipartite graphs with m vertices in each partite set. First, we characterize the structure of extremal graphs for the Turán number of perfect matchings in graphs with maximum degree three. Using this characterization, we show that AR(G,mK2)=3m−3. Moreover, we show that AR(F,mK2)=3m−5, where F is the subfamily of 3-edge-connected graphs in G. In order to prove this result, we characterize the structure of bipartite graphs, which contains no perfect matchings, with maximum degree three and size Turán number minus one.