English

Critical sets, crowns, and local maximum independent sets

Discrete Mathematics 2020-08-12 v1 Combinatorics

Abstract

A set SV(G)S\subseteq V(G) is independent (or stable) if no two vertices from SS are adjacent, and by Ind(G)\mathrm{Ind}(G) we mean the set of all independent sets of GG. A set AInd(G)A\in\mathrm{Ind}(G) is critical (and we write ACritIndep(G)A\in CritIndep(G)) if AN(A)=max{IN(I):IInd(G)}\left\vert A\right\vert -\left\vert N(A)\right\vert =\max\{\left\vert I\right\vert -\left\vert N(I)\right\vert :I\in \mathrm{Ind}(G)\}, where N(I)N(I) denotes the neighborhood of II. If SInd(G)S\in\mathrm{Ind}(G) and there is a matching from N(S)N(S) into SS, then SS is a crown, and we write SCrown(G)S\in Crown(G). Let Ψ(G)\Psi(G) be the family of all local maximum independent sets of graph GG, i.e., SΨ(G)S\in\Psi(G) if SS is a maximum independent set in the subgraph induced by SN(S)S\cup N(S). In this paper we show that CritIndep(G)Crown(G)CritIndep(G)\subseteq Crown(G) Ψ(G)\subseteq\Psi(G) are true for every graph. In addition, we present some classes of graphs where these families coincide and form greedoids or even more general set systems that we call augmentoids.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2008.04587,
  title  = {Critical sets, crowns, and local maximum independent sets},
  author = {Vadim E. Levit and Eugen Mandrescu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.04587},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

19 pages, 11 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T17:46:21.420Z