Algorithm on rainbow connection for maximal outerplanar graphs

Abstract

In this paper, we consider rainbow connection number of maximal outerplanar graphs(MOPs) on algorithmic aspect. For the (MOP) $G$, we give sufficient conditions to guarantee that $rc(G) = diam(G).$ Moreover, we produce the graph with given diameter $d$ and give their rainbow coloring in linear time. X.Deng et al. $\cite{XD}$ give a polynomial time algorithm to compute the rainbow connection number of MOPs by the Maximal fan partition method, but only obtain a compact upper bound. J. Lauri $\cite{JL}$ proved that, for chordal outerplanar graphs given an edge-coloring, to verify whether it is rainbow connected is NP-complete under the coloring, it is so for MOPs. Therefore we construct Central-cut-spine of MOP $G,$ by which we design an algorithm to give a rainbow edge coloring with at most $2rad(G)+2+c,0\leq c\leq rad(G)-2$ colors in polynomial time.