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Related papers: Cops and Robbers on graphs of bounded diameter

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The game of cops and robbers, played on a fixed graph $G$, is a two-player game, where the cop and the robber (the players) take turns in moving to adjacent vertices. The game finishes if the cop lands on the robber's vertex. In that case…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-02-24 Jorge Cruz Chapital , Tomáš Flídr , Maria-Romina Ivan

The degree-diameter problem seeks to find the maximum possible order of a graph with a given (maximum) degree and diameter. It is known that graphs attaining the maximum possible value (the Moore bound) are extremely rare, but much activity…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2016-05-03 Dominique Buset , Mourad El Amiri , Grahame Erskine , Hebert Pérez-Rosés , Mirka Miller

In this paper, we consider a variant of the cops and robbers game on a graph, introduced by Kinnersley and Peterson, in which every time the robber uses an edge, it is removed from the graph, known as bridge-burning cops and robbers. In…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2020-11-21 Rebekah Herrman , Peter van Hintum , Stephen G. Z. Smith

Introduced by Harris, Insko, Prieto Langarica, Stoisavljevic, and Sullivan, the \emph{tipsy cop and drunken robber} is a variant of the cop and robber game on graphs in which the robber simply moves randomly along the graph, while the cop…

Probability · Mathematics 2024-03-13 Pamela E. Harris , Erik Insko , Florian Lehner

We compare two kinds of pursuit-evasion games played on graphs. In Cops and Robbers, the cops can move strategically to adjacent vertices as they please, while in a new variant, called deterministic Zombies and Survivors, the zombies (the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-09-11 David Offner , Kerry Ojakian

The guarding game is a game in which several cops try to guard a region in a (directed or undirected) graph against Robber. Robber and the cops are placed on the vertices of the graph; they take turns in moving to adjacent vertices (or…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2013-11-15 R. Samal , T. Valla

We prove that the cop number of any $2K_2$-free graph is at most 2, proving a conjecture of Sivaraman and Testa. We also show that the upper bound of $3$ on the cop number of $2K_1+K_2$-free (co-diamond--free) graphs is best possible.

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-10-29 Jérémie Turcotte

\textit{Pursuit-evasion games} have been intensively studied for several decades due to their numerous applications in artificial intelligence, robot motion planning, database theory, distributed computing, and algorithmic theory.…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2023-07-11 Harmender Gahlawat , Meirav Zehavi

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

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

The game of cops and robber is a two-player turn-based game played on a graph where the cops try to capture the robber. The cop number of a graph $G$, denoted by $c(G)$ is the minimum number of cops required to capture the robber. For a…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2025-05-22 Arnab Char , Paras Vinubhai Maniya , Dinabandhu Pradhan

We show that the expected time for a smart "cop" to catch a drunk "robber" on an $n$-vertex graph is at most $n + {\rm o}(n)$. More precisely, let $G$ be a simple, connected, undirected graph with distinguished points $u$ and $v$ among its…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2014-11-05 Natasha Komarov , Peter Winkler

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 investigate various pursuit-evasion parameters on latin square graphs, including the cop number, metric dimension, and localization number. The cop number of latin square graphs is studied, and for $k$-MOLS$(n),$ bounds for the cop…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-10-01 Shreya Ahirwar , Anthony Bonato , Leanna Gittins , Alice Huang , Trent G. Marbach , Tomer Zaidman

In this paper, we answer two open problems from [Breen et al., Throttling for the game of Cops and Robbers on graphs, Discrete Math., 341 (2018) 2418-2430]. The throttling number $th_c(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the minimum possible value of $k…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-10-23 Jesse Geneson

In this paper we study the concurrent cops and robber (CCCR) game. CCCR follows the same rules as the classical, turn-based game, except for the fact that the players move simultaneously. The cops' goal is to capture the robber and the…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2015-06-12 Georgios Konstantinidis , Athanasios Kehagias

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

This paper is a contribution to the classical cops and robber problem on a graph, directed to two-dimensional grids and toroidal grids. These studies are generally aimed at determining the minimum number of cops needed to capture the robber…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2019-01-24 Fabrizio Luccio , Linda Pagli

We establish a lower bound for the cop number of graphs of high girth in terms of the minimum degree, and more generally, in terms of a certain growth condition. We show, in particular, that the cop number of any graph with girth $g$ and…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2020-05-25 Peter Bradshaw , Seyyed Aliasghar Hosseini , Bojan Mohar , Ladislav Stacho

We show that if $\{G_n\}_{n\geq 1}$ is a sequence of graphs of order $n$ with bounded maximum degree and isoperimetric function $\Phi(G_n,n^{1-\alpha})$ bounded away from $0$ as $n\rightarrow \infty$, then the cop number of $G_n$ is at most…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-02-12 Alexander Clow