Nordhaus-Gaddum Inequalities for Dominating-Set Counts in Bipartite Graphs

A dominating set in a graph $G$ is a subset $S$ of its vertices such that each vertex in $G$ is either in $S$ or adjacent to a vertex in $S$. Nordhaus-Gaddum inequalities relate the values of a graph parameter on a graph and its complement. In this setting, Keough and Shane conjecture that any graph $G$ on $n$ vertices satisfies $\partial(G) + \partial(\bar{G}) \leq 2(2^{\lfloor n/2 \rfloor} - 1)(2^{\lceil n/2 \rceil} - 1) + 2$, where $\partial(G)$ is the number of dominating sets in $G$. We partially resolve this conjecture for the bipartite case by proving the stronger bound: for a bipartite graph $G$ with nonempty bipartition $(A,B)$, it holds that $\partial(G) + \partial(\bar{G}) \leq 2(2^{|A|} - 1)(2^{|B|} - 1) + 2$. We also characterize the bipartite graphs for which equality holds.