Properly colored short cycles in edge-colored graphs

Abstract

Properly colored cycles in edge-colored graphs are closely related to directed cycles in oriented graphs. As an analogy of the well-known Caccetta-H\"{a}ggkvist Conjecture, we study the existence of properly colored cycles of bounded length in an edge-colored graph. We first prove that for all integers $s$ and $t$ with $t\geq s\geq2$, every edge-colored graph $G$ with no properly colored $K_{s,t}$ contains a spanning subgraph $H$ which admits an orientation $D$ such that every directed cycle in $D$ is a properly colored cycle in $G$. Using this result, we show that for $r\geq4$, if the Caccetta-H\"{a}ggkvist Conjecture holds , then every edge-colored graph of order $n$ with minimum color degree at least $n/r+2\sqrt{n}+1$ contains a properly colored cycle of length at most $r$. In addition, we also obtain an asymptotically tight total color degree condition which ensures a properly colored (or rainbow) $K_{s,t}$.