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We show that the cop number of any graph on 18 or fewer vertices is at most 3. This answers a question posed by Andreae in 1986, as well as more recently by Baird et al. We also find all 3-cop-win graphs on 11 vertices, narrow down the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-10-29 Jérémie Turcotte , Samuel Yvon

Meyniel's conjecture states that $n$-vertex connected graphs have cop number $O(\sqrt{n})$. The current best known upper bound is $n/2^{(1-o(1))\sqrt{\log n}}$, proved independently by Lu and Peng (2011), and by Scott and Sudakov (2011). In…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-02-10 Prosenjit Bose , Louis Esperet , Jędrzej Hodor , Gwenaël Joret , Piotr Micek , Clément Rambaud

In many variants of the game of Cops and Robbers on graphs, multiple cops play against a single robber. In 2019, Cox and Sanaei introduced a variant of the game that gives the robber a more active role than simply evading the cop. In their…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-05-17 Joshua Carlson , Meghan Halloran , Carolyn Reinhart

We consider a variation of a cops and robbers game in which the cop---here referred to as "hunter"---is not constrained by the graph but must play in the dark against a "mole." We characterize the graphs---which we will call…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2014-05-15 Natasha Komarov , Peter Winkler

In the game of Cops and Robbers, the capture time of a graph is the minimum number of moves needed by the cops to capture the robber, assuming optimal play. We prove that the capture time of the $n$-dimensional hypercube is $\Theta (n\ln…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2013-08-16 Anthony Bonato , William B. Kinnersley , P. Gordinowicz , P. Pralat

We introduce and study quantized versions of Cop and Robber game. We achieve this by using graph-preserving quantum operations, which are the quantum analogues of stochastic operations preserving the graph. We provide the tight bound for…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2017-11-29 Adam Glos , Jarosław Adam Miszczak

We study the zero-visibility cops and robbers game, where the robber is invisible to the cops until they are caught. This differs from the classic game where full information about the robber's location is known at any time. A previously…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2025-09-08 Igor Potapov , Tymofii Prokopenko , John Sylvester

We theoretically analyze the Cops and Robber Game for the first time in a multidimensional grid. It is shown that for an $n$-dimensional grid, at least $n$ cops are necessary to ensure capture of the robber. We also present a set of cop…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2015-06-12 Sayan Bhattacharya , Goutam Paul , Swagato Sanyal

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

The game of cops and robber has been studied for many years. Denoting $\mathsf{Forb}(4K_1)$ to be the family of all graphs that contain no induced subgraph isomorphic to $4K_1$ (e.g., with independence number less than $4$), we prove that…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-01-15 Zhaoyu Wu

A cop tries to capture a robber in a topological space $X$ being unable to see him. For which spaces $X$ does the cop have a strategy which allows him to capture the robber independently of his efforts to escape? In other words, when is…

General Topology · Mathematics 2022-10-24 Jonathan A. Barmak

We study a variation of the classical pursuit-evasion game of Cops and Robbers in which agents are required to move to an adjacent vertex on every turn. We explore how the minimum number of cops needed to catch the robber can change when…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-08-22 Ilya Gromovikov , William B. Kinnersley , Ben Seamone

We bound expected capture time and throttling number for the cop versus gambler game on a connected graph with $n$ vertices, a variant of the cop versus robber game that is played in darkness, where the adversary hops between vertices using…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2019-06-03 Jesse Geneson , Carl Joshua Quines , Espen Slettnes , Shen-Fu Tsai

We study a variation of the cops and robber game characterising treewidth, where in each play at most q cops can be placed in order to catch the robber, where q is a parameter of the game. We prove that if k cops have a winning strategy in…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2024-02-15 Isolde Adler , Eva Fluck

We provide a sublinear bound on the cop throttling number of a connected graph. Related to the graph searching game Cops and Robbers, the cop throttling number, written $\mathrm{th}_c(G)$, is given by…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-01-28 Anthony Bonato , Sean English

The main topic of this paper is motivated by a localization problem in cellular networks. Given a graph $G$ we want to localize a walking agent by checking his distance to as few vertices as possible. The model we introduce is based on a…

The deduction game may be thought of as a variant on the classical game of cops and robber in which the cops (searchers) aim to capture an invisible robber (evader); each cop is allowed to move at most once, and cops situated on different…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-10-30 Andrea C. Burgess , Nancy E. Clarke , Shannon L. Fitzpatrick , Melissa A. Huggan

This paper describes a 720-vertex connected planar graph G such that cop1(G), denoting the minimum number of cops needed to catch the robber in the 1-cop-move game on G, is at least 4 and at most 7. Furthermore, G has a connected subgraph H…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2019-12-17 Wei Quan Lim

We present an algorithm of time complexity $O(kn^{k+2})$ deciding whether a graph $G$ on $n$ vertices is $k$-copwin. The fastest algorithm thus far had time complexity $O(n^{2k+2})$.

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2022-06-16 Jan Petr , Julien Portier , Leo Versteegen

We study the localization game on dense random graphs. In this game, a {\em cop} $x$ tries to locate a {\em robber} $y$ by asking for the graph distance of $y$ from every vertex in a sequence of sets $W_1,W_2,\ldots,W_\ell$. We prove high…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-05-16 Andrzej Dudek , Alan Frieze , Wesley Pegden