A star edge coloring is any edge coloring which is both proper and contains no cycles or path of length four which are bicolored, and the star chromatic index of a graph is the smallest number of colors for which that graph can be star edge colored. Star edge coloring is a relatively new field in graph theory, and very little is known regarding upper bounds of the star chromatic index of most graph types, one of these families being multipartite graphs. We investigate a method for obtaining upper bounds on the star chromatic index of complete multipartite graphs. The basic idea is to decompose such graphs into smaller complete bipartite graphs and applying known upper bounds for such graphs.This method has also been implemented and we present a hypothesis based on simulations.

An area in graph theory is graph colouring, which essentially is a labeling of the vertices or edges according to certain constraints. In this thesis we consider star edge colouring, which is a variant of proper edge colouring where we additionally require the graph to have no two-coloured paths or cycles with length 4. The smallest number of colours needed to colour a graph G with a star edge colouring is called the star chromatic index of G and is denoted <img src="http://www.diva-portal.org/cgi-bin/mimetex.cgi?%5Cchi'_%7Bst%7D(G)" />. This paper proves an upper bound of the star chromatic index of bipartite graphs in terms of the maximum degree; the maximum degree of G is the largest number of edges incident to a single vertex in G. For bipartite graphs Bk with maximum degree <img src="http://www.diva-portal.org/cgi-bin/mimetex.cgi?k%5Cgeq1" />, the star chromatic index is proven to satisfy<img src="http://www.diva-portal.org/cgi-bin/mimetex.cgi?%20%5Cchi'_%7Bst%7D(B_k)%20%5Cleq%20k%5E2%20-%20k%20+%201" />. For bipartite graphs <img src="http://www.diva-portal.org/cgi-bin/mimetex.cgi?B_%7Bk,n%7D" />, where all vertices in one part have degree n, and all vertices in the other part have degree k, it is proven that the star chromatic index satisfies <img src="http://www.diva-portal.org/cgi-bin/mimetex.cgi?%5Cchi'_%7Bst%7D(Bk,n)%20%5Cleq%20k%5E2%20-2k%20+%20n%20+%201,%20k%20%5Cgeq%20n%20%3E%201" />. We also prove an upper bound for a special case of multipartite graphs, namely <img src="http://www.diva-portal.org/cgi-bin/mimetex.cgi?K_%7Bn,1,1,%5Cdots,1%7D" /> with m parts of size one. The star chromatic index of such a graph satisfies<img src="http://www.diva-portal.org/cgi-bin/mimetex.cgi?%5Cchi'_%7Bst%7D(K_%7Bn,1,1,%5Cdots,1%7D)%20%5Cleq%2015%5Clceil%5Cfrac%7Bn%7D%7B8%7D%5Crceil%5Ccdot%5Clceil%5Cfrac%7Bm%7D%7B8%7D%5Crceil%20+%20%5Cfrac%7B1%7D%7B2%7Dm(m-1),%5C,m%20%5Cgeq%205" />. For complete multipartite graphs where m &lt; 5, we prove lower upper bounds than the one above.