Path Decomposition Number of Certain Graphs
ODAM-Vol. 1 (2018), Issue 1, pp. 26–32 | Open Access Full-Text PDF
Opeyemi Oyewumi, Abolape Deborah Akwu,Theresa Iveren Azer
Abstract:Let \(G\) be a simple, finite and connected graph. A graph is said to be decomposed into subgraphs \(H_1\) and \(H_2\) which is denoted by \(G= H_1 \oplus H_2\), if \(G\) is the edge disjoint union of \(H_1\) and \(H_2\). Assume that \(G= H_1 \oplus H_2 \oplus \cdots \oplus H_k\) and if each \(H_i\), \(1 \leq i \leq k\), is a path or cycle in \(G\), then the collection of edge-disjoint subgraphs of \(G\) denoted by \(\psi\) is called a path decomposition of \(G\). If each \(H_i\) is a path in \(G\) then \(\psi\) is called an acyclic path decomposition of \(G\). The minimum cardinality of a path decomposition of \(G\), denoted by \(\pi (G)\), is called the path decomposition number and the minimum cardinality of an acyclic path decomposition of \(G\), denoted by \(\pi_a(G)\), is called the acyclic path decomposition number of \(G\). In this paper, we determine path decomposition number for a number of graphs in particular, the Cartesian product of graphs. We also provided bounds for \(\pi(G)\) and \(\pi_a(G)\) for these graphs.