Improved bounds on acyclic edge colouring (Q2462375)

For a simple undirected graph \(G\) let \(\Delta (G)\) be the maximum degree of \(G\) and \(g(G)\) the girth (length of a shortest cycle) of \(G\). It is proved that the acyclic chromatic index \(a^{\prime }(G)\leq 6\Delta (G)\) for all graphs of girth at least 9. The method is extended to obtain a bound of \(4.52\Delta (G)\) with the girth requirement \(g\geq 220\). A relationship between \(g(G)\) and \(a'(G)\) is also obtained.