English

An Extremal Problem for the Neighborhood Lights Out Game

Combinatorics 2020-07-08 v2

Abstract

Neighborhood Lights Out is a game played on graphs. Begin with a graph and a vertex labeling of the graph from the set {0,1,2,,1}\{0,1,2,\dots, \ell-1\} for N\ell \in \mathbb{N}. The game is played by toggling vertices: when a vertex is toggled, that vertex and each of its neighbors has its label increased by 11 (modulo \ell). The game is won when every vertex has label 0. For any nNn\in\mathbb{N} it is clear that one cannot win the game on KnK_n unless the initial labeling assigns all vertices the same label. Given that the KnK_n has the maximum number of edges of any simple graph on nn vertices it is natural to ask how many edges can be in a graph so that the Neighborhood Lights Out game is winnable regardless of the initial labeling. We find all such extremal graphs on nn vertices that have (n2)c\binom{n}{2} - c edges for cn2+3c\leq \lceil\frac{n}{2}\rceil +3 and all those that have minimum degree n3n-3. The proofs of our results require us to introduce a new version of the Lights Out game that can be played given any square matrix.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1908.03649,
  title  = {An Extremal Problem for the Neighborhood Lights Out Game},
  author = {Lauren Keough and Darren Parker},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.03649},
  year   = {2020}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T10:44:09.252Z