Research Problem 1
by I. Cahit
Strong Graceful Labeling of the Comet trees

Number the vertices of a given n-vertex tree with the numbers from the set N={1,2,…,n} so that the resulting induce edge labels which is given by the absolute difference of the labels at its end points constitute the distinct integers 1,2,…,n-1. This is basic definition of the well-known graceful tree conjecture (Ringel [1]-Kotzig [2]). Strong version of this problem is to find a graceful labeling of a given n-vertex tree T such that for every three vertices x , y and z with (x,y), (y,z)e T either f(x)<f(y) and f(y)>f(z) or f(x)>f(y) and f(y)<f(z) hold. It was conjectured that this is true for all trees (Cahit [3]). Several people have interested to this problem (includes D. E. Knuth, J.-C Bermond, Y. Caro ) but even for the comets (terminology used by A. Rosa for 2-stars) it is not decided yet for n>25, n=odd whether all comets have strong graceful labeling. Note that graceful labeling of comets have been shown to be graceful in [4]. The strong graceful labeling of the comet with 19 vertices is shown below as an example.

  1. G. Ringel, Problem 25, "Theory of Graphs and its Applic.", Proc. of the Symp. held in June 1963, p.164, (1964).
  2. Rosa, On certain valuations of the vertices of a graph, "Theory of Graphs", ed. P. Rosenstehl, Gordon and Breach, New York, 1967, pp.349-355.
  3. Cahit, On graceful trees, Bull. of the ICA, 12, September 1994, pp. 15-18.
  4. Cahit and R. Cahit, On the graceful numbering of spanning trees, Inf. Proc. Lett., 3 , 1974/1975, pp. 115-118.