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Related papers: A lower bound on the zero forcing number

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Zero forcing is a process on a graph that colors vertices blue by starting with some of the vertices blue and applying a color change rule. Throttling minimizes the sum of the size of the initial blue vertex set and the number of the time…

We consider vertex colorings of graphs in which adjacent vertices have distinct colors. A graph is $s$-chromatic if it is colorable in $s$ colors and any coloring of it uses at least $s$ colors. The forcing chromatic number $F(G)$ of an…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2007-05-23 Frank Harary , Wolfgang Slany , Oleg Verbitsky

Zero forcing is a process on a graph in which the goal is to force all vertices to become blue by applying a color change rule. Throttling minimizes the sum of the number of vertices that are initially blue and the number of time steps…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-03-15 Joshua Carlson

Zero forcing is a graph propagation process for which vertices fill-in (or propagate information to) neighbor vertices if all neighbors except for one, are filled. The zero-forcing number is the smallest number of vertices that must be…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-10-24 Heather LeClair , Tim Spilde , Sarah Anderson , Brenda Kroschel

A forcing set for a perfect matching of a graph is defined as a subset of the edges of that perfect matching such that there exists a unique perfect matching containing it. A complete forcing set for a graph is a subset of its edges, such…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-09-27 Javad B. Ebrahimi , Aref Nemayande , Elahe Tohidi

Zero forcing is a deterministic iterative graph coloring process in which vertices are colored either blue or white, and in every round, any blue vertices that have a single white neighbor force these white vertices to become blue. Here we…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-09-17 Sean English , Calum MacRury , Pawel Pralat

It is well-known that the zero forcing number of a graph provides a lower bound on the minimum rank of a graph. In this paper we bound and characterize the zero forcing number of certain circulant graphs, including some bipartite…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-06-10 Linh Duong , Brenda K. Kroschel , Michael Riddell , Kevin N. Vander Meulen , Adam Van Tuyl

In this paper, we study minimal (with respect to inclusion) zero forcing sets. We first investigate when a graph can have polynomially or exponentially many distinct minimal zero forcing sets. We also study the maximum size of a minimal…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-04-18 Boris Brimkov , Joshua Carlson

Zero forcing is a combinatorial game played on graphs that can be used to model the spread of information with repeated applications of a color change rule. In general, a zero forcing parameter is the minimum number of initial blue vertices…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-04-01 Joshua Carlson , John Petrucci

Zero forcing is a one-player game played on a graph. The player chooses some set of vertices to color, then iteratively applies a color change rule: If all but one of a colored vertex's neighbors are colored, color (i.e. "force") the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-10-02 Shannon Dillman , Franklin Kenter

In this paper, we showcase the process of using an automated conjecturing program called \emph{TxGraffiti} written and maintained by the second author. We begin by proving a conjecture formulated by \emph{TxGraffiti} that for a claw-free…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-09-13 Boris Brimkov , Randy Davila , Houston Schuerger , Michael Young

Let $G=(V,E)$ be a finite connected graph along with a coloring of the vertices of $G$ using the colors in a given set $X$. In this paper, we introduce multi-color forcing, a generalization of zero-forcing on graphs, and give conditions in…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-12-05 Chassidy Bozeman , Pamela E. Harris , Neel Jain , Ben Young , Teresa Yu

Zero forcing is an iterative process on a graph used to bound the maximum nullity. The process begins with select vertices as colored, and the remaining vertices can become colored under a specific color change rule. The goal is to find a…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2017-09-27 Franklin H. J. Kenter , Jephian C. -H. Lin

This paper proves a conjecture generated by the artificial intelligence conjecturing program called \emph{TxGraffiti}. More specifically, we show that if $G$ is a connected, cubic, and claw-free graph, then $Z(G) \le \gamma(G) + 2$, where…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-11-20 Randy R. Davila

In a zero forcing process, vertices of a graph are colored black and white initially, and if there exists a black vertex adjacent to exactly one white vertex, then the white vertex is forced to be black. A zero blocking set is an initial…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-08-14 Hau-Yi Lin , Wu-Hsiung Lin , Gerard Jennhwa Chang

Zero forcing can be described as a combinatorial game on a graph that uses a color change rule in which vertices change white vertices to blue. The throttling number of a graph minimizes the sum of the number of vertices initially colored…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-02-23 Joshua Carlson , Juergen Kritschgau

It is known that the zero forcing number of a graph is an upper bound for the maximum nullity of the graph. In this paper, we search for characteristics of a graph that guarantee the maximum nullity of the graph and the zero forcing number…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-12-17 Derek Young

In zero forcing, the focus is typically on finding the minimum cardinality of any zero forcing set in the graph; however, the number of cardinalities between $0$ and the number of vertices in the graph for which there are both zero forcing…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-09-13 Bonnie Jacob

Probabilistic zero forcing is a coloring game played on a graph where the goal is to color every vertex blue starting with an initial blue vertex set. As long as the graph is connected, if at least one vertex is blue then eventually all of…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-01-13 Shyam Narayanan , Alec Sun

This article studies the \emph{$k$-forcing number} for oriented graphs, generalizing both the \emph{zero forcing number} for directed graphs and the $k$-forcing number for simple graphs. In particular, given a simple graph $G$, we introduce…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2017-09-12 Yair Caro , Randy Davila , Ryan Pepper