English

An improved upper bound for the domination number of a graph

Combinatorics 2025-12-09 v2 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

Let GG be a graph of order nn. A classical upper bound for the domination number of a graph GG having no isolated vertices is n2\lfloor\frac{n}{2}\rfloor. However, for several families of graphs, we have γ(G)n\gamma(G) \le \lfloor\sqrt{n}\rfloor which gives a substantially improved upper bound. In this paper, we give a condition necessary for a graph GG to have γ(G)n\gamma(G) \le \lfloor\sqrt{n}\rfloor, and some conditions sufficient for a graph GG to have γ(G)n\gamma(G) \le \lfloor\sqrt{n}\rfloor. We also present a characterization of all connected graphs GG of order nn with γ(G)=n\gamma(G) = \lfloor\sqrt{n}\rfloor. Further, we prove that for a graph GG not satisfying rad(G)=diam(G)=rad(G)=diam(G)=2rad(G)=diam(G)=rad(\overline{G})=diam(\overline{G})=2, deciding whether γ(G)n\gamma(G) \le \lfloor\sqrt{n}\rfloor or γ(G)n\gamma(\overline{G}) \le \lfloor\sqrt{n}\rfloor can be done in polynomial time. We conjecture that this decision problem can be solved in polynomial time for any graph GG.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2401.02765,
  title  = {An improved upper bound for the domination number of a graph},
  author = {Subramanian Arumugam and Suresh Manjanath Hegde and Shashanka Kulamarva},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.02765},
  year   = {2025}
}