English

All Graphs with a Failed Zero Forcing Number of Two

Combinatorics 2021-10-19 v1

Abstract

Given a graph GG, the zero-forcing number of GG, Z(G)Z(G), is the smallest cardinality of any set SS of vertices on which repeated applications of the forcing rule results in all vertices being in SS. The forcing rule is: if a vertex vv is in SS, and exactly one neighbor uu of vv is not in SS, then uu is added to SS in the next iteration. Zero-forcing numbers have attracted great interest over the past 15 years and have been well studied. In this paper we investigate the largest size of a set SS that does not force all of the vertices in a graph to be in SS. This quantity is known as the failed zero-forcing number of a graphs and will be denoted by F(G)F(G), and has received attention in recent years. We present new results involving this parameter. In particular, we completely characterize all graphs GG where F(G)=2F(G)=2, solving a problem posed in 2015 by Fetcie, Jacob, and Saavedra.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2110.09200,
  title  = {All Graphs with a Failed Zero Forcing Number of Two},
  author = {Luis Gomez and Karla Rubi and Jorden Terrazas and Darren A. Narayan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.09200},
  year   = {2021}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-24T06:58:19.612Z