Interval edge-colorings of complete graphs

Abstract

An edge-coloring of a graph $G$ with colors $1,2,\ldots,t$ is an interval $t$-coloring if all colors are used, and the colors of edges incident to each vertex of $G$ are distinct and form an interval of integers. A graph $G$ is interval colorable if it has an interval $t$-coloring for some positive integer $t$. For an interval colorable graph $G$, $W(G)$ denotes the greatest value of $t$ for which $G$ has an interval $t$-coloring. It is known that the complete graph is interval colorable if and only if the number of its vertices is even. However, the exact value of $W(K_{2n})$ is known only for $n \leq 4$. The second author showed that if $n = p2^q$, where $p$ is odd and $q$ is nonnegative, then $W(K_{2n}) \geq 4n-2-p-q$. Later, he conjectured that if $n \in \mathbb{N}$, then $W(K_{2n}) = 4n - 2 - \left\lfloor\log_2{n}\right\rfloor - \left \| n_2 \right \|$, where $\left \| n_2 \right \|$ is the number of $1$'s in the binary representation of $n$. In this paper we introduce a new technique to construct interval colorings of complete graphs based on their 1-factorizations, which is used to disprove the conjecture, improve lower and upper bounds on $W(K_{2n})$ and determine its exact values for $n \leq 12$.