English

Geodetic sets for directed acyclic planar geodetic graphs

Combinatorics 2026-07-08 v1 Data Structures and Algorithms

Abstract

A set of vertices SS of a directed graph GG is geodetic if every vertex of GG lies on a shortest path from a vertex of SS to a vertex of SS. A directed graph is geodetic if there is at most one shortest path from every vertex of GG to every vertex of GG. We prove the NP-completeness of the following decision problem. Given a directed acyclic planar geodetic graph GG and an integer kk, does GG have a geodetic set with at most kk vertices? This implies that the question of whether GG has a strong or a monitoring geodetic set with at most kk vertices is also NP-complete for directed acyclic planar geodetic graphs. Furthermore, we prove that the number of vertices in a minimum geodetic set and the number of vertices in a minimum edge geodetic set can be computed in linear time for directed acyclic series-parallel graphs.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.07107,
  title  = {Geodetic sets for directed acyclic planar geodetic graphs},
  author = {Benedikt G. Hein and Egon Wanke},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.07107},
  year   = {2026}
}