The rainbow saturation number is linear

Abstract

Given a graph $H$, we say that an edge-coloured graph $G$ is $H$-rainbow saturated if it does not contain a rainbow copy of $H$, but the addition of any non-edge in any colour creates a rainbow copy of $H$. The rainbow saturation number $\text{rsat}(n,H)$ is the minimum number of edges among all $H$-rainbow saturated edge-coloured graphs on $n$ vertices. We prove that for any non-empty graph $H$, the rainbow saturation number is linear in $n$, thus proving a conjecture of Gir\~{a}o, Lewis, and Popielarz. In addition, we also give an improved upper bound on the rainbow saturation number of the complete graph, disproving a second conjecture of Gir\~{a}o, Lewis, and Popielarz.