Strong chromatic index of products of graphs

Abstract

The strong chromatic index of a graph is the minimum number of colours needed to colour the edges in such a way that each colour class is an induced matching. In this paper, we present bounds for the strong chromatic index of three different products of graphs in terms of the strong chromatic index of each factor. For the Cartesian product of paths, cycles or complete graphs, we derive sharper results. In particular, strong chromatic indices of d-dimensional grids and of some toroidal grids are given along with approximate results on the strong chromatic index of generalized hypercubes. © 2007 Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DMTCS).