Harmonious coloring of uniform hypergraphs

Abstract

A harmonious coloring of a k-uniform hypergraph H is a vertex coloring such that no two vertices in the same edge share the same color, and each k-element subset of colors appears on at most one edge. The harmonious number h(H) is the least number of colors needed for such a coloring. We prove that k-uniform hypergraphs of bounded maximum degree ? satisfy h(H) = O(k?k!m), where m is the number of edges in H which is best possible up to a multiplicative constant. Moreover, for every fixed ?, this constant tends to 1 with k ? ?. We use a novel method, called entropy compression, that emerged from the algorithmic version of the Lov?sz Local Lemma due to Moser and Tardos.