Total chromatic number of one kind of join graphs (Q2501562)

A total \(k\)-coloring of a graph \(G=(V,E)\) is an assigment of \(k\) colors to the elements of \(V\cup E\) such that incident elements receive different colors. The total chromatic number \(\chi_T(G)\) of \(G\) is the smallest integer \(k\) for which \(G\) admits a total \(k\)-coloring. The join of two (disjoint) graphs \(G\) and \(H\) is obtained from \(G\cup H\) by adding new edges \(xy\) between all vertices \(x\) in \(G\) and an \(y\) in \(H\). The authors prove that \(\chi_T(G) =\Delta(G) + 1\) whenever \(G\) is the join of a complete bipartite graph and a path (\(\Delta(G)\) denotes the maximum vertex degree in \(G\)).