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Related papers: Variations on Cops and Robbers

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In the game of cops and robber, the cops try to capture a robber moving on the vertices of the graph. The minimum number of cops required to win on a given graph $G$ is called the cop number of $G$. The biggest open conjecture in this area…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-09-25 Pawel Pralat , Nicholas Wormald

"Zombies and Survivor" is a variant of the well-studied game of "Cops and Robber" where the zombies (cops) can only move closer to the survivor (robber). We consider the deterministic version of the game where a zombie can choose their path…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-06-04 Valentin Bartier , Laurine Bénéteau , Marthe Bonamy , Hoang La , Jonathan Narboni

A gambler moves between the vertices $1, \ldots, n$ of a graph using the probability distribution $p_{1}, \ldots, p_{n}$. Multiple cops pursue the gambler on the graph, only being able to move between adjacent vertices. We investigate the…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2016-10-11 Jesse Geneson

We introduce a new game played on graphs, ``Agents and Adversary". This game is reminiscent of ``Cops and Robbers" but has some fundamental differences. We classify infinite families of graphs as Agents-win and Adversary-win. We then define…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-03-13 William K. Moses , Amanda Redlich , Frederick Stock

In this article, we discuss when one can extend an r-regular graph to an r + 1 regular by adding edges. Different conditions on the num- ber of vertices n and regularity r are developed. We derive an upper bound of r, depending on n, for…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2015-09-21 Anirban Banerjee , Saptarshi Bej

Mohar recently adapted the classical game of Cops and Robber from graphs to metric spaces, thereby unifying previously studied pursuit-evasion games. He conjectured that finitely many cops can win on any compact geodesic metric space, and…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-09-08 Agelos Georgakopoulos

We propose a definition of generalized Cops and Robbers games where there are two players, the Pursuer and the Evader, who each move via prescribed rules. If the Pursuer can ensure that the game enters into a fixed set of final positions,…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2017-04-20 Anthony Bonato , Gary MacGillivray

We introduce and study the Generalized Cops and Robbers game (GCR), an N-player pursuit game in graphs. The two-player version is essentially equivalent to the classic Cops and Robbers (CR) game. The three-player version can be understood…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2018-07-24 Athanasios Kehagias

In the Localization game played on graphs, a set of cops uses distance probes to identify the location of an invisible robber. We present an extension of the game and its main parameter, the localization number, to directed graphs. We…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-08-17 Anthony Bonato , Ryan Cushman , Trent G. Marbach , Brittany Pittman

We investigate the computational complexity of deciding whether k cops can capture a robber on a graph G. In 1995, Goldstein and Reingold conjectured that the problem is EXPTIME-complete when both G and k are part of the input; we prove…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2014-12-05 William B. Kinnersley

We study relations between diameter $D(G)$, domination number $\gamma(G)$, independence number $\alpha(G)$ and cop number $c(G)$ of a connected graph $G$, showing (i.) $c(G) \leq \alpha(G)-\lfloor \frac{D(G)-3}{2} \rfloor$, and (ii.) $c(G)…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-03-21 Jan Petr , Julien Portier , Leo Versteegen

We study zombies and survivor, a variant of the game of cops and robber on graphs. In this variant, the single survivor plays the role of the robber and attempts to escape from the zombies that play the role of the cops. The zombies are…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-04-27 Prosenjit Bose , Jean-Lou De Carufel , Thomas Shermer

We consider the Robber Locating Game, where an invisible moving robber tries to evade the pursuit of one or more helicopter cops, who send distance probes from anywhere on the graph. In this paper, we attempt to propose two useful…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2023-07-07 Shiqi Pan

Cops and Robbers games have been studied for the last few decades in computer science and mathematics. As in general pursuit evasion games, pursuers (cops) seek to capture evaders (robbers); however, players move in turn and are constrained…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2020-04-27 Frédéric Simard , Josée Desharnais , François Laviolette

In the game of cops and robber, the cops try to capture a robber moving on the vertices of the graph. The minimum number of cops required to win on a given graph $G$ is called the cop number of $G$. The biggest open conjecture in this area…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2014-12-12 Pawel Pralat , Nick Wormald

We introduce a variant of the Localization game in which the cops only have visibility one, along with the corresponding optimization parameter, the one-visibility localization number $\zeta_1$. By developing lower bounds using…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-09-24 Anthony Bonato , Trent G. Marbach , Michael Molnar , JD Nir

In this paper we consider the cop number of graphs with no, or few, short cycles. We show that when $G$ is graph of girth $g$ and the minimum degree $\delta \geq 2$, then $c(G) = O(n\log(n)(\delta-1)^{-\lfloor \frac{g+1}{4} \rfloor})$ as a…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-07-22 Alexander Clow

We investigate a pursuit-evasion game on an undirected graph in which a robber, moving at a fixed constant speed, attempts to evade a team of cops who are blind to the robber's location and can quickly travel between any pair of vertices in…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-12-01 Hector Buffière , Rutger Campbell , Kevin Hendrey , Sang-il Oum

A new bound (Theorem \ref{thm:main}) for the duration of the chip-firing game with $N$ chips on a $n$-vertex graph is obtained, by a careful analysis of the pseudo-inverse of the discrete Laplacian matrix of the graph. This new bound is…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2014-11-25 Felix Goldberg

The $r$-flip-width of a graph, for $r\in \mathbb{N}\cup \{\infty\}$, is a graph parameter defined in terms of a variant of the cops and robber game, called the flipper game, and it was introduced by Toru\'{n}czyk (FOCS 2023). We prove that…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-10-22 Yeonsu Chang , Sejin Ko , O-joung Kwon , Myounghwan Lee