Tight Nordhaus-Gaddum-type upper bound for total-rainbow connection number of graphs

Abstract

A graph is said to be \emph{total-colored} if all the edges and the vertices of the graph are colored. A total-colored graph is \emph{total-rainbow connected} if any two vertices of the graph are connected by a path whose edges and internal vertices have distinct colors. For a connected graph $G$, the \emph{total-rainbow connection number} of $G$, denoted by $trc(G)$, is the minimum number of colors required in a total-coloring of $G$ to make $G$ total-rainbow connected. In this paper, we first characterize the graphs having large total-rainbow connection numbers. Based on this, we obtain a Nordhaus-Gaddum-type upper bound for the total-rainbow connection number. We prove that if $G$ and $\overline{G}$ are connected complementary graphs on $n$ vertices, then $trc(G)+trc(\overline{G})\leq 2n$ when $n\geq 6$ and $trc(G)+trc(\overline{G})\leq 2n+1$ when $n=5$. Examples are given to show that the upper bounds are sharp for $n\geq 5$. This completely solves a conjecture in [Y. Ma, Total rainbow connection number and complementary graph, Results in Mathematics 70(1-2)(2016), 173-182].