Acyclic edge coloring of subcubic graphs

An acyclic edge coloring of a graph is a proper edge coloring such that there are no bichromatic cycles. The acyclic chromatic index of a graph is the minimum number k such that there is an acyclic edge coloring using k colors and is denoted by a(G). From a result of Burnstein it follows that all subcubic graphs are acyclically edge colorable using 5 colors. This result is tight since there are 3-regular graphs which require 5 colors. In this paper we prove that any non-regular connected graph of maximum degree 3 is acyclically edge colorable using at most 4 colors. This result is tight since all edge maximal non-regular connected graphs of maximum degree 3 require 4 colors.