Star edge coloring of graphs with Mad(G)< 14/5

Abstract

A star edge coloring of a graph G is a proper edge coloring such that there is no bicolored path or cycle of length four. The minimum number of colors needed for a graph G to admit a star edge coloring is called the star chromatic index and it is denoted by χ ′ s(G). In this paper, we consider graphs of maximum degree ∆ ≥ 4 and show that if the maximum average degree of a graph is less than 14 5 then χ ′ s(G) ≤ 2∆ + 1.