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We explore a variant of the game of Cops and Robber introduced by Bonato et al.~where the robber is invisible unless outside the common neighbourhood of the cops. The hyperopic cop number is analogous to the cop number and we investigate…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-07-16 Nancy E. Clarke , Stephen Finbow , Margaret-Ellen Messinger , Amanda Porter

The game of Cops and Robbers is a well known pursuit-evasion game played on graphs. It has been proved \cite{bounded_degree} that cubic graphs can have arbitrarily large cop number $c(G)$, but the known constructions show only that the set…

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

We investigate Hunters & Rabbit game, where a set of hunters tries to catch an invisible rabbit that slides along the edges of a graph. We show that the minimum number of hunters required to win on an (n\times m)-grid is \lfloor…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2015-02-23 Tatjana V. Abramovskaya , Fedor V. Fomin , Petr A. Golovach , Michał Pilipczuk

We prove that every connected $P_5$-free graph has cop number at most two, solving a conjecture of Sivaraman. In order to do so, we first prove that every connected $P_5$-free graph $G$ with independence number at least three contains a…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-10-29 Maria Chudnovsky , Sergey Norin , Paul Seymour , Jérémie Turcotte

A defender dispatches patrollers to circumambulate a perimeter to guard against potential attacks. The defender decides on the time points to dispatch patrollers and each patroller's direction and speed, as long as the long-run rate…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2020-11-10 Kyle Y Lin

We consider the Cops and Robber pursuit-evasion game when the edge-set of the graph is allowed to change in time, possibly at every round. Specifically, the game is played on an infinite periodic sequence $\mathcal{G} = (G_0, \dots,…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2024-10-31 Jean-Lou De Carufel , Paola Flocchini , Nicola Santoro , Frédéric Simard

The cop number of a graph $G$ is the smallest $k$ such that $k$ cops win the game of cops and robber on $G$. We investigate the maximum cop number of geometric intersection graphs, which are graphs whose vertices are represented by…

We introduce and study the game of "Selfish Cops and Active Robber" (SCAR) which can be seen as an multiplayer variant of the "classic" two-player Cops and Robbers (CR) game. In classic CR all cops are controlled by a single player, who has…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2018-09-13 G. Konstantinidis , Ath. Kehagias

In the cops and robber games played on a simple graph $G$, Aigner and Fromme's lemma states that one cop can guard a shortest path in the sense that the robber cannot enter this path without getting caught after finitely many steps. In this…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-04-11 Linyuan Lu , Zhiyu Wang

Lee, Mart\'inez-Pedroza and Rodr\'iguez-Quinche define two new group invariants, the strong cop number $\operatorname{sCop}$ and the weak cop number $\operatorname{wCop}$, by examining winning strategies for certain combinatorial games…

Group Theory · Mathematics 2025-02-10 Raphael Appenzeller , Kevin Klinge

We survey results at the intersection of topological graph theory and the game of Cops and Robbers, focusing on results, conjectures, and open problems for the cop number of a graph embedded on a surface. After a discussion on results for…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-04-24 Anthony Bonato , Bojan Mohar

The game of cops and robbers is a pursuit game on graphs where a set of agents, called the cops try to get to the same position of another agent, called the robber. Cops and robbers has been studies on several classes of graphs including…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-03-19 Seyyed Aliasghar Hosseini , Masood Masjoody , Ladislav Stacho

We describe here a new concept of one group chasing another, called "group chase and escape", by presenting a simple model. We will show that even a simple model can demonstrate rather rich and complex behavior. In particular, there are…

Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems · Physics 2015-03-13 Atsushi Kamimura , Toru Ohira

We investigate multiple variants of the game Cops and Robbers. Playing it on an $n \times n$ toroidal chess graph, the game is varied by defining moves for cops and robbers differently, always mimicking moves of certain chess pieces. In…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-10-26 Allyson Hahn , Neil R. Nicholson

We adapt the Gy\'{a}rf\'{a}s path argument to prove that $t-2$ cops can capture a robber, in at most $t-1$ moves, in the game of cops and robbers played in a graph that does not contain the $t$-vertex path as an induced subgraph.

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-03-06 Vaidy Sivaraman

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

We consider a bandit problem over a graph where the rewards are not directly observed. Instead, the decision maker can compare two nodes and receive (stochastic) information pertaining to the difference in their value. The graph structure…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2011-09-13 Dotan Di Castro , Claudio Gentile , Shie Mannor

We consider a pursuit-evasion scenario involving a group of pursuers and a single evader in a two-dimensional unbounded environment. The pursuers aim to capture the evader in finite time while ensuring the evader remains enclosed within the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-05-25 Dinesh Patra , Prajakta Surve , Ashish R. Hota , Shaunak D. Bopardikar

We define new graph parameters, called flip-width, that generalize treewidth, degeneracy, and generalized coloring numbers for sparse graphs, and clique-width and twin-width for dense graphs. The flip-width parameters are defined using…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-03-26 Szymon Toruńczyk