On acyclic colorings of direct products
A coloring of a graph G is an acyclic coloring if the union of any two color classes induces a forest. It is proved that the acyclic chromatic number of direct product of two trees T₁ and T₂ equals min{Δ(T₁) + 1, Δ(T₂) + 1}. We also prove that the acyclic chromatic number of direct product of two complete graphs Kₘ and Kₙ is mn-m-2, where m ≥ n ≥ 4. Several bounds for the acyclic chromatic number of direct products are given and in connection to this some questions are raised.