Streaming Edge Coloring with Asymptotically Optimal Colors

Given a graph $G$, an edge-coloring is an assignment of colors to edges of $G$ such that any two edges sharing an endpoint receive different colors. By Vizing's celebrated theorem, any graph of maximum degree $\Delta$ needs at least $\Delta$ and at most $(\Delta + 1)$ colors to be properly edge colored. In this paper, we study edge colorings in the streaming setting. The edges arrive one by one in an arbitrary order. The algorithm takes a single pass over the input and must output a solution using a much smaller space than the input size. Since the output of edge coloring is as large as its input, the assigned colors should also be reported in a streaming fashion. The streaming edge coloring problem has been studied in a series of works over the past few years. The main challenge is that the algorithm cannot "remember" all the color assignments that it returns. To ensure the validity of the solution, existing algorithms use many more colors than Vizing's bound. Namely, in $n$-vertex graphs, the state-of-the-art algorithm with $\widetilde{O}(n s)$ space requires $O(\Delta^2/s + \Delta)$ colors. Note, in particular, that for an asymptotically optimal $O(\Delta)$ coloring, this algorithm requires $\Omega(n\Delta)$ space which is as large as the input. Whether such a coloring can be achieved with sublinear space has been left open. In this paper, we answer this question in the affirmative. We present a randomized algorithm that returns an asymptotically optimal $O(\Delta)$ edge coloring using $\widetilde{O}(n \sqrt{\Delta})$ space. More generally, our algorithm returns a proper $O(\Delta^{1.5}/s + \Delta)$ edge coloring with $\widetilde{O}(n s)$ space, improving prior algorithms for the whole range of $s$.