English

Maker-Breaker domination number

Combinatorics 2019-03-14 v2

Abstract

The Maker-Breaker domination game is played on a graph GG by Dominator and Staller. The players alternatively select a vertex of GG that was not yet chosen in the course of the game. Dominator wins if at some point the vertices he has chosen form a dominating set. Staller wins if Dominator cannot form a dominating set. In this paper we introduce the Maker-Breaker domination number γMB(G)\gamma_{{\rm MB}}(G) of GG as the minimum number of moves of Dominator to win the game provided that he has a winning strategy and is the first to play. If Staller plays first, then the corresponding invariant is denoted γMB(G)\gamma_{{\rm MB}}'(G). Comparing the two invariants it turns out that they behave much differently than the related game domination numbers. The invariant γMB(G)\gamma_{{\rm MB}}(G) is also compared with the domination number. Using the Erd\H{o}s-Selfridge Criterion a large class of graphs GG is found for which γMB(G)>γ(G)\gamma_{{\rm MB}}(G) > \gamma(G) holds. Residual graphs are introduced and used to bound/determine γMB(G)\gamma_{{\rm MB}}(G) and γMB(G)\gamma_{{\rm MB}}'(G). Using residual graphs, γMB(T)\gamma_{{\rm MB}}(T) and γMB(T)\gamma_{{\rm MB}}'(T) are determined for an arbitrary tree. The invariants are also obtained for cycles and bounded for union of graphs. A list of open problems and directions for further investigations is given.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1810.04397,
  title  = {Maker-Breaker domination number},
  author = {Valentin Gledel and Vesna Iršič and Sandi Klavžar},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1810.04397},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

20 pages, 5 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T04:34:30.095Z