Partitioning 3-Edge-Colored Complete Equi-Bipartite Graphs by Monochromatic Trees under a Color Degree Condition

Abstract

The monochromatic tree partition number of an $r$-edge-colored graph $G$, denoted by $t_r(G)$, is the minimum integer $k$ such that whenever the edges of $G$ are colored with $r$ colors, the vertices of $G$ can be covered by at most $k$ vertex-disjoint monochromatic trees. In general, to determine this number is very difficult. For 2-edge-colored complete multipartite graph, Kaneko, Kano, and Suzuki gave the exact value of $t_2(K(n_1,n_2,\cdots,n_k))$. In this paper, we prove that if $n\geq 3$, and $K(n,n)$ is 3-edge-colored such that every vertex has color degree 3, then $t_3(K(n,n))=3$.