On the number of irregular assignments on a graph (Q1182886)

The authors call an injective mapping \(w:E\to\mathbb{N}\) on a graph \(G=(V,E)\), \(| V|=v\), \(| E|=q\), an assignment (= edge labeling) on \(G\), and the image \(w(e)\) the weight of \(e\) for every edge \(e\in E\). An assignment \(w\) is said to be irregular if the induced mapping \(wt:V\to\mathbb{N}\) defined by \(wt(x)=\sum_{e\in I(x)}w(e)\), \(I(x)=\{e\in E\mid e\) is incident to \(x\)\}, is injective, too. This paper deals with the very interesting question for the number of distinct assignments of \(G\). If \(s=\max\{w(e)\mid e\in E\}\) denotes the strength of \(w\) and \(\lambda\in\mathbb{N}\) and if \(\hbox{Irr}(G,\lambda)\) is the number of irregular assignments on \(G\) with \(s\leq\lambda\) the authors succeed in proving the remarkable statement that \(|\hbox{Irr}(G,\lambda)-\lambda^ q+c_ 1\lambda^{q- 1}|=O(\lambda^{q-2})\) for \(\lambda\to\infty\), where \(c_ 1\) is a constant depending on \(G\) only. They conclude by giving an explicit expression for \(c_ 1\).