Antimagic Labeling of Graphs

Keivin Isufaj Zelealem Belaineh Yilma

Student Researcher Faculty Advisor
B.Sc. Computer Science Department of Mathematical Sciences
Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University

ABSTRACT
An antimagic labeling of a directed graph with n vertices and m edges is a bijection
between the set of the edges E and the set of integers {1, 2, . . . , m}, such that all the ver-
tex sums are distinct, where a vertex sum is the sum of labels of the edges entering the
vertex minus the sum of the labels of the edges leaving it. Hefetz, Mütze, and Schwartz
(1990) introduced the notion of antimagic orientations. Other than that, they conjectured
that any undirected graph admits an antimagic orientation. In this paper, we are going to
support this conjecture by showing that any complete partite graphs admits an antimagic
orientation.

1 Introduction
An antimagic labeling of an undirected graph with m edges is a bijection between the set of edges of the graphs and the
set of the numbers {1, 2, . . . , m}, such that the vertex sums are all distinct, where a vertex sum is the sum of labels of the
edges inident to the vertex. Hartsfield and Ringel[2] were the first to bring this notion in 1990. They also conjectured that
every graph except K2 has an antimagic labeling and for 3 decades now the conjecture has remained unproved. However,
there has been significant progress. Alon et al. [1] showed that there exists an absolute constant c such that if the mini-
mum degree of a graph is at least clog(n) then that graph is antimagic. They also showed that if the maximum degree of a
graph is n − 2 then the graph is antimagic. The result was later improved by Yilma [7] to the maximum degree required to be
at least n−3 in order for the graph to be antimagic. Finally, Alon et al.[1] show that every complete partite graph is antimagic.

If we give a direction to every edge in a graph G, we are giving an orientation to the graph (Fig. 1). Hefetz, Mutze and
Schwartz [3] introduced the idea of antimagic labelings of directed graphs. An antimagic labeling of a directed graph G with
m edges is a bijection between the set of edges and the set of integers {1, 2, . . . , m}, where the vertex sums are all distinct. In
this case the definition of a vertex sum changes. A vertex sum in a directed graph, is the result of the sum of the labels of the
arcs entering the vertex minus the sum of the labels of all the arcs leaving the vertex.

Fig. 1. Antimagic labeling of an undirected and directed graph respectively.

 Hefetz, Mutze and Schwartz[3] raise the question:
1. Is every orientation of a simple connected undirected graph antimagic?
2. Does every simple connected undirected graph admit an antimagic orientation?
To answer the first question, they claimed they know no other counterexample except K1,2 and K3 . They also proved that
every orientation of a star Sn , wheel Wn and complete graph Kn where n ≥ 4 is antimagic (Figure 2). They also showed that
there exists an absolute constant c such that every orientation of any graph with n vertices with minimum degree at least
clogn is antimagic.

Fig. 2. Example of a start S7 , wheel W6 and complete graph K4

For the second question there has been more results. It has been proven that every regular graph admits an antimagic
orientation [1,4]. A regular graph is a graph where the degree of every vertex is the same. Shan and Yu [5] showed that every
biregular bipartite graph has an antimagic orientation. A biregular bipartite graph is a bipartite graph where the vertices on
one side of the bipartition have a common degree. is a graph whose vertices can be divided into two disjoint and independent
sets U and V such that every edge connects a vertex in U to one in V . To support the conjecture and extend the property of
complete partite graphs of being antimagic to having an antimagic orientation, we are going to show that:

Theorem 1. Every complete partite graph admits an antimagic orientation.

2 Notation and Definitions

A complete r-partite graph is an r-partite graph (i.e., a set of graph vertices decomposed into r disjoint sets such that no two
graph vertices within the same set are adjacent) such that every pair of graph vertices in the r sets are adjacent (Fig 3.) [6].

Let G be a graph. If G is an r-partite graph, with partite classes A1 , A2 . . . , Ar , we are going to denote the graph as
G[A1 , A2 , . . . , Ar ].

An edge between v, u ∈ G is denoted (v, u) if the edge leaves v in the direction of u and (u, v) otherwise.

The label on this edge will be c(v, u) = −c(u, v).

The vertex sum of a vertex v ∈ G will be denoted as

wG (v) = ∑ c(u, v) − ∑ c(v, u)
(u,v)∈E (v,u)∈E

Fig. 3. Complete tri-partite graph K2,2,2

3 Results
Let G be an undirected complete partite graph, G[A1 , A2 , . . . , Ar ]. Let the sizes of the partite classes be n1 , n2 , . . . , nr such
that n1 ≤ n2 ≤ . . . ≤ nr . Let Ai be a partition of the graph with n1 vertices and let B = G/Ai be the remaining part of the
graph. Name the vertices in Ai as Ai = {v1 , v2 , ..., vn1 }. Let q denote the number of edges in B. Orient the edges in B
arbitrarily and assign them values from {1, 2, .., q} to them. Consider our initial labeling to have the following property :
w0 (u1 ) ≤ w0 (u2 ) ≤ ... ≤ w0 (ul ) where B = {u1 , u2 , .., ul }. We now show, that if we direct all the other edges from Ai to B,
namely (vi , u j ) for all i and j, this orientation is going to have an antimagic labelling.

Assign to the edge (vi , u j ) the label : c(vi , u j ) = (i − 1)l + j + q, where q is the total number of edges in B.

The vertex sums of the vertices in B have changed. Accordingly, the additional contribution for some vertex u j ∈ B is
going to be:
n1 n1
∑ c(vi , u j ) = ∑ (i − 1)l + j + q
i=1 i=1
n1 −1 n1
=l ∑ i+ ∑ j+q
i=0 i=1
n1 (n1 − 1)
=l× + n1 × ( j + q)
2
n1
= (2 j + 2q + l × (n1 − 1)) (∗)
2
Notice that the function shown above at (∗) is strictly increasing with respect to j. Therefore, after this contribution the
vertex sums of vertices in B are going to be distinct.
Now we have to verify the vertex sums of vertices in Ai :
l l
w(vi ) = ∑ c(u j , vi ) = − ∑ c(vi , u j )
j=1 j=1
l
= − ∑ (i − 1)l + j + q
j=1
l l
= − ∑ j − ∑ (i − 1)l + q
j=1 j=1
l +1
= −l × − l × ((i − 1)l + q)
2
l
= − × (2il + 2q − l + 1) (∗∗)
2
Notice that the value of the function shown above at (∗∗)is strictly decreasing with respect to i, therefore the vertex sums in
A are going to be distinct.

Note that the ordering of the weights of vertices in A is going to be w(v1 ) > w(v2 ) . . . > w(vn1 ). Similarly, the ordering
of the vertex sums in B is going to be w(u1 ) < w(u2 ) . . . w(ul ). Therefore it is enough for us to prove that, the maximum of
vertex sums in Ai is less than the minimum of vertex sums in B, namely w(v1 ) < w(u1 ).

Since v1 ∈ Ai and |Ai | = n1 then deg(v1 ) ≥ deg(u1 ). According to the labeling we gave to the vertices in Ai , we know
that
w(v1 ) < −(q + 1)deg(v1 ) ≤ −(q + 1)deg(u1 )

4 Discussion
To further optimize and extend the results that support the conjecture, we tried to adapt the proof mentioned above to
prove that :
1. Every orientation of a complete r-partite graph is antimagic.
2. Every tri−regular tri−partite graph admits an antimagic orientation.
The results for the first claim were very limited, because the absolute nature of ”every” graph, requires a very detailed and
exhausting proof. Thus we directed the rest of the research towards the second claim. We were able to find an algorithm that
works for edge cases, however there was no big contribution to the big picture. Note that the results of this paper can be used
for special cases of the tri − regular tri − partite question. A complete tri − partite graphs is tri − regular as well.
5 References
[1] N. Alon, G. Kaplan, A. Lev, Y. Roditty and R. Yuster, Dense graphs are antimagic, Journal of Graph Theory,
47(2004), pp. 297-309
[2] N. Hartsfield, and G. Ringel. Pearls in Graph Theory: A Comprehensive Introduc-tion. Academic Press, INC.,
Boston, 1990 (Revised version 1994).
[3] D. Hefetz, T. Mütze, and J. Schwartz. On antimagic directed graphs. Journal of Graph Theory, 64(3):219–232, 2010.
[4] Li, T, Song, Zi-X, Wang, G, Yang, D, Zhang, C-Q. Antimagic orientations of even regular graphs. Journal of Graph
Theory. 2019; 90: 46– 53.
[5] S. Songling, and X. Yu. Antimagic Orientation of Biregular Bipartite Graphs. Electronic Journal of Combinatorics,
24 (4), 2017.
[6] Weisstein, Eric W. ”Complete k-Partite Graph.” From MathWorld–A Wolfram Web Resource.
https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Completek-PartiteGraph.html
[7] Y. Zelealem. Antimagic properties of graphs with large maximum degree. J.Graph Theory, 72(4):367–373, 2013.