Anti-Ramsey numbers of small graphs

Abstract

The anti-Ramsey number $AR(n,G$), for a graph $G$ and an integer $n\geq|V(G)|$, is defined to be the minimal integer $r$ such that in any edge-colouring of $K_n$ by at least $r$ colours there is a multicoloured copy of $G$, namely, a copy of $G$ whose edges have distinct colours. In this paper we determine the anti-Ramsey numbers of all graphs having at most four edges.