Strong chromatic index of sparse graphs

A coloring of the edges of a graph $G$ is strong if each color class is an induced matching of $G$. The strong chromatic index of $G$, denoted by $χ_{s}^{\prime}(G)$, is the least number of colors in a strong edge coloring of $G$. In this note we prove that $χ_{s}^{\prime}(G)\leq (4k-1)Δ(G)-k(2k+1)+1$ for every $k$-degenerate graph $G$. This confirms the strong version of conjecture stated recently by Chang and Narayanan [3]. Our approach allows also to improve the upper bound from [3] for chordless graphs. We get that $$ for any chordless graph $G$. Both bounds remain valid for the list version of the strong edge coloring of these graphs.

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