Edge coloring complete uniform hypergraphs with many components

Abstract

Let $H$ be a hypergraph. For a $k$-edge coloring $c : E(H) \to \{1,...,k\}$ let $f(H,c)$ be the number of components in the subhypergraph induced by the color class with the least number of components. Let $f_k(H)$ be the maximum possible value of $f(H,c)$ ranging over all $k$-edge colorings of $H$. If $H$ is the complete graph $K_n$ then, trivially, $f_1(K_n)=f_2(K_n)=1$. In this paper we prove that for $n \geq 6$, $f_3(K_n)=\lfloor n/6 \rfloor+1$ and supply close upper and lower bounds for $f_k(K_n)$ in case $k \geq 4$. Several results concerning the value of $f_k(K_n^r)$, where $K_n^r$ is the complete $r$-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices, are also established.