The wild number of an edge-colored graph

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Anders, Katie, Foster-Greenwood, Briana, Garcia, Rebecca, Krawzik, Naomi
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Anders, Katie
Foster-Greenwood, Briana
Garcia, Rebecca
Krawzik, Naomi
author_facet Anders, Katie
Foster-Greenwood, Briana
Garcia, Rebecca
Krawzik, Naomi
contents We introduce the wild number of an edge-colored graph as a measure of how close an edge-colored graph is to having a spanning tree in every color. This combinatorial concept originates in the algebraic theory of generalized graph splines. After showing that determining the wild number of a graph is an NP-complete problem, we provide bounds on the wild number and find the exact wild number for trees, cycles, and families of graphs with restrictions on the edge-colorings. This article serves as an invitation to the topic of wild numbers and includes several open problems, many of which are suitable for undergraduate research projects.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_06711
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The wild number of an edge-colored graph
Anders, Katie
Foster-Greenwood, Briana
Garcia, Rebecca
Krawzik, Naomi
Combinatorics
05C70 (Primary) 05C15, 05C40, 05C25 (Secondary)
We introduce the wild number of an edge-colored graph as a measure of how close an edge-colored graph is to having a spanning tree in every color. This combinatorial concept originates in the algebraic theory of generalized graph splines. After showing that determining the wild number of a graph is an NP-complete problem, we provide bounds on the wild number and find the exact wild number for trees, cycles, and families of graphs with restrictions on the edge-colorings. This article serves as an invitation to the topic of wild numbers and includes several open problems, many of which are suitable for undergraduate research projects.
title The wild number of an edge-colored graph
topic Combinatorics
05C70 (Primary) 05C15, 05C40, 05C25 (Secondary)
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.06711