Some Remarks on Rainbow Connectivity

An edge (vertex) colored graph is rainbow-connected if there is a rainbow path between any two vertices, i.e. a path all of whose edges (internal vertices) carry distinct colors. Rainbow edge (vertex) connectivity of a graph G is the smallest number of colors needed for a rainbow edge (vertex) coloring of G. In this article, we propose a very simple approach to studying rainbow connectivity in graphs. Using this idea, we give a unified proof of several known results, as well as some new ones.