A CHARACTERIZATION ON THE ADJACENT VERTEX DISTINGUISHING INDEX OF PLANAR GRAPHS WITH LARGE MAXIMUM DEGREE.

An adjacent vertex distinguishing coloring of a graph G is a proper edge coloring of G such that any pair of adjacent vertices admits different sets of colors. The minimum number of colors needed for such a coloring of G is denoted by χ'a(G). In this paper, we show that if G is a planar graph with maximum degree Δ ≥ 16, then Δ ≤ χ'a(G) ≤ Δ + 1, and χ'a(G) = Δ+1 if and only if G contains two adjacent vertices of maximum degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]