Further results on the rainbow vertex-disconnection of graphs

Abstract

Let $G$ be a nontrivial connected and vertex-colored graph. A subset $X$ of the vertex set of $G$ is called rainbow if any two vertices in $X$ have distinct colors. The graph $G$ is called \emph{rainbow vertex-disconnected} if for any two vertices $x$ and $y$ of $G$, there exists a vertex subset $S$ such that when $x$ and $y$ are nonadjacent, $S$ is rainbow and $x$ and $y$ belong to different components of $G-S$; whereas when $x$ and $y$ are adjacent, $S+x$ or $S+y$ is rainbow and $x$ and $y$ belong to different components of $(G-xy)-S$. Such a vertex subset $S$ is called a \emph{rainbow vertex-cut} of $G$. For a connected graph $G$, the \emph{rainbow vertex-disconnection number} of $G$, denoted by $rvd(G)$, is the minimum number of colors that are needed to make $G$ rainbow vertex-disconnected. In this paper, we obtain bounds of the rainbow vertex-disconnection number of a graph in terms of the minimum degree and maximum degree of the graph. We give a tighter upper bound for the maximum size of a graph $G$ with $rvd(G)=k$ for $k\geq\frac{n}{2}$. We then characterize the graphs of order $n$ with rainbow vertex-disconnection number $n-1$ and obtain the maximum size of a graph $G$ with $rvd(G)=n-1$. Moreover, we get a sharp threshold function for the property $rvd(G(n,p))=n$ and prove that almost all graphs $G$ have $rvd(G)=rvd(\overline{G})=n$. Finally, we obtain some Nordhaus-Gaddum-type results: $n-5\leq rvd(G)+rvd(\overline{G})\leq 2n$ and $n-1\leq rvd(G)\cdot rvd(\overline{G})\leq n^2$ for the rainbow vertex-disconnection numbers of nontrivial connected graphs $G$ and $\overline{G}$ with order $n\geq 24$.