Proper Coloring Distance in Edge-Colored Cartesian Products of Complete Graphs and Cycles

Abstract

An path that is edge-colored is called proper if no two consecutive edges receive the same color. A general graph that is edge-colored is called properly connected if, for every pair of vertices in the graph, there exists a properly colored path from one to the other. Given two vertices u and v in a properly connected graph G, the proper distance is the length of the shortest properly colored path from u to v. By considering a specific class of colorings that are properly connected for Cartesian products of complete and cyclic graphs, we present results on the proper distance between all pairs of vertices in the graph.