Anti-van der Waerden numbers on Graphs

Abstract

In this paper arithmetic progressions on the integers and the integers modulo n are extended to graphs. This allows for the definition of the anti-van der Waerden number of a graph. Much of the focus of this paper is on 3-term arithmetic progressions for which general bounds are obtained based on the radius and diameter of a graph. The general bounds are improved for trees and Cartesian products and exact values are determined for some classes of graphs. Larger k-term arithmetic progressions are considered and a connection between the Ramsey number of paths and the anti-van der Waerden number of graphs is established.Keywords anti-van der Waerden number; rainbow; k-term arithmetic progression; Ramsey number.