Related papers: Blocker size via matching minors

A set $D \subseteq V$ of a graph $G=(V, E)$ is a dominating set of $G$ if each vertex $v\in V\setminus D$ is adjacent to at least one vertex in $D,$ whereas a set $D_2\subseteq V$ is a $2$-dominating (double dominating) set of $G$ if each…

An induced matching in a graph is a set of edges whose endpoints induce a $1$-regular subgraph. Gupta et al. (2012,\cite{Gupta}) showed that every $n$-vertex graph has at most $10^{\frac{n}{5}}\approx 1.5849^n$ maximal induced matchings,…

An induced matching $M$ in a graph $G$ is a matching in $G$ that is also the edge set of an induced subgraph of $G$. That is, any edge not in $M$ must have no more than one incident vertex saturated by $M$. The maximum size $|M|$ of an…

Let $G$ be a graph with vertex set $V(G)$ and edge set $E(G)$. A subset $I$ of $V(G)$ is an independent vertex subset if no two vertices in $I$ are adjacent in $G$. We study the number, $\sigma_1(G)$, of all subsets of $v(G)$ that contain…

An $n$-vertex, $d$-regular graph can have at most $2^{n/2+o_d(n)}$ independent sets. In this paper we address what happens with this upper bound when we impose the further condition that the graph has independence number at most $\alpha$.…

In the Independent set problem, the input is a graph $G$, every vertex has a non-negative integer weight, and the task is to find a set $S$ of pairwise non-adjacent vertices, maximizing the total weight of the vertices in $S$. We give an…

Let $i_t(G)$ denote the number of independent sets of size $t$ in a graph $G$. Levit and Mandrescu have conjectured that for all bipartite $G$ the sequence $(i_t(G))_{t \geq 0}$ (the {\em independent set sequence} of $G$) is unimodal. We…

A subset of vertices in a graph $G$ is considered a maximal dissociation set if it induces a subgraph with vertex degree at most 1 and it is not contained within any other dissociation sets. In this paper, it is shown that for $n\geq 3$,…

The problem of finding an optimal vertex cover in a graph is a classic NP-complete problem, and is a special case of the hitting set question. On the other hand, the hitting set problem, when asked in the context of induced geometric…

Let $X$ be $k$-regular graph on $v$ vertices and let $\tau$ denote the least eigenvalue of its adjacency matrix $A(X)$. If $\alpha(X)$ denotes the maximum size of an independent set in $X$, we have the following well known bound: \[…

The isolation number of a graph $G$ (also called the vertex-edge domination number of $G$), denoted by $\iota(G)$, is the size of a smallest subset $D$ of the vertex set $V(G)$ of $G$ such that $G-N[D]$ (the graph obtained by deleting the…

Perhaps the best known kernelization result is the kernel of size 335k for the Planar Dominating Set problem by Alber et al. [JACM 2004], later improved to 67k by Chen et al. [SICOMP 2007]. This result means roughly, that the problem of…

We prove that every $n$-vertex $K_t$-minor-free graph $G$ of maximum degree $\Delta$ has a set $F$ of $O(t^2(\log t)^{1/4}\sqrt{\Delta n})$ edges such that every component of $G - F$ has at most $n/2$ vertices. This is best possible up to…

We initiate the study of approximating the largest induced expander in a given graph $G$. Given a $\Delta$-regular graph $G$ with $n$ vertices, the goal is to find the set with the largest induced expansion of size at least $\delta \cdot…

For a graph $G$ with vertex set $V$, let N($G$) denote the number of nonempty subsets of $V$ that induce a connected graph in $G$. In this paper, we focus on determining N($G$) for $G$ in the family $\mathbb{B}_n$ of $n$-vertex bicyclic…

Let $\mathcal{H}$ be an $r$-uniform hypergraph. The \emph{minimum positive co-degree} of $\mathcal{H}$, denoted by $\delta_{r-1}^+(\mathcal{H})$, is the minimum $k$ such that if $S$ is an $(r-1)$-set contained in a hyperedge of…

The celebrated Hadwiger's conjecture states that if a graph contains no $K_{t+1}$ minor then it is $t$-colourable. If true, it would in particular imply that every $n$-vertex $K_{t+1}$-minor-free graph has an independent set of size at…

Let $G$ be a simple graph with $2n$ vertices and a perfect matching. The forcing number $f(G,M)$ of a perfect matching $M$ of $G$ is the smallest cardinality of a subset of $M$ that is contained in no other perfect matching of $G$. Among…

Given a graph $G$, the strong clique number of $G$, denoted $\omega_S(G)$, is the maximum size of a set $S$ of edges such that every pair of edges in $S$ has distance at most $2$ in the line graph of $G$. As a relaxation of the renowned…

An independent dominating set D of a graph G = (V,E) is a subset of vertices such that every vertex in V \ D has at least one neighbor in D and D is an independent set, i.e. no two vertices of D are adjacent in G. Finding a minimum…