English

Graphs with unique Grundy dominating sets

Combinatorics 2025-04-04 v2 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

Given a graph GG consider a procedure of building a dominating set DD in GG by adding vertices to DD one at a time in such a way that whenever vertex xx is added to DD there exists a vertex yNG[x]y\in N_G[x] that becomes dominated only after xx is added to DD. The maximum cardinality of a set DD obtained in the described way is called the Grundy domination number of GG and DD a Grundy dominating set. While a Grundy dominating set of a connected graph GG is not unique unless GG is the trivial graph, we consider a natural weaker uniqueness condition, notably that for every two Grundy dominating sets in a graph GG there is an automorphism that maps one to the other. We investigate both versions of uniqueness for several concepts of Grundy domination, which appeared in the context of domination games and are also closely related to zero forcing. For each of the four variations of Grundy domination we characterize the graphs that have only one Grundy dominating set of the given type, and characterize those forests that enjoy the weaker (isomorphism based) condition of uniqueness. The latter characterizations lead to efficient algorithms for recognizing the corresponding classes of forests.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2103.10172,
  title  = {Graphs with unique Grundy dominating sets},
  author = {Boštjan Brešar and Tanja Dravec},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.10172},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

20 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-24T00:18:41.478Z