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Related papers: Cop and robber on finite spaces

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We consider a variation of cop vs.\ robber on graph in which the robber is not restricted by the graph edges; instead, he picks a time-independent probability distribution on $V(G)$ and moves according to this fixed distribution. The cop…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2013-08-23 Natasha Komarov , Peter Winkler

The game of Cops and Robber is a pursuit-evasion game which is usually played on a connected graph. In the game, a set of cops and a robber move around the vertices of a graph along edges, where the cops aim to capture the robber, while the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-07-27 Pinkaew Siriwong , Ratinan Boonklurb , Henry Liu , Sirirat Singhun

Cops and Robbers is a game played on a graph where a set of cops attempt to capture a single robber. The game proceeds in rounds, where each round first consists of the cops' turn, followed by the robber's turn. In the cops' turn, every cop…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2025-07-03 Prosenjit Bose , Pat Morin , Karthik Murali

We consider the well-studied cops and robbers game in the context of oriented graphs, which has received surprisingly little attention to date. We examine the relationship between the cop numbers of an oriented graph and its underlying…

The Cops and Robber game on geodesic spaces is a pursuit-evasion game with discrete steps which captures the behavior of the game played on graphs, as well as that of continuous pursuit-evasion games. One of the outstanding open problems…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-02-09 Vesna Iršič , Bojan Mohar , Alexandra Wesolek

We investigate the game of cops and robber, played on a finite graph, between one cop and one robber. If the cop can force a win on a graph, the graph is called cop-win. We describe a procedure we call corner ranking, performed on a graph,…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2017-03-14 David Offner , Kerry Ojakian

Cops and Robbers is a well-studied pursuit-evasion game in which a set of cops seeks to catch a robber in a graph G, where cops and robber move along edges of G. The cop number of G is the minimum number of cops that is sufficient to catch…

Cops and Robbers is a type of pursuit-evasion game played on a graph where a set of cops try to capture a single robber. The cops first choose their initial vertex positions, and later the robber chooses a vertex. The cops and robbers make…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2024-09-25 Prosenjit Bose , Jean-Lou De Carufel , Anil Maheshwari , Karthik Murali

The game of cops and robber is a pursuit-evasion game played on graphs that has been extensively studied. Traditionally the game is played with one or more cops and only one robber, but in this paper we consider the game played with…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-09-15 Miha Gyergyek , Vesna Iršič Chenoweth

We consider the new game of Cops and Attacking Robbers, which is identical to the usual Cops and Robbers game except that if the robber moves to a vertex containing a single cop, then that cop is removed from the game. We study the minimum…

Here we merge the two fields of Cops and Robbers and Graph Pebbling to introduce the new topic of Cops and Robbers Pebbling. Both paradigms can be described by moving tokens (the cops) along the edges of a graph to capture a special token…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-02-10 Nancy Clarke , Joshua Forkin , Glenn Hurlbert

We consider the model of limited visibility Cops and Robbers, where the cops can only see within their $l$-neighbourhood. We prove that the number of cops needed to see the robber can be arbitrarily smaller than the number needed to capture…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-07-02 Bojan Bašić , Alfie Davies , Aleksa Džuklevski , Strahinja Gvozdić , Yannick Mogge

The recently introduced variation of the game of cops and robber is played on geodesic spaces. In this paper we establish some general strategies for the players, in particular the generalized radial strategy and the covering space…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2022-11-07 Vesna Iršič , Bojan Mohar , Alexandra Wesolek

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

In the game of Cops and Robbers, one of the most useful results is that an isometric path in a graph can be guarded by one cop. In this paper, we introduce the concept of wide shadow in a subgraph, and use it to characterize all 1-guardable…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-06-04 Sebastián González Hermosillo de la Maza , Bojan Mohar

We generalise the popular cops and robbers game to multi-layer graphs, where each cop and the robber are restricted to a single layer (or set of edges). We show that initial intuition about the best way to allocate cops to layers is not…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-02-10 Jessica Enright , Kitty Meeks , William Pettersson , John Sylvester

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

We consider a variant of Cops and Robbers wherein each edge traversed by the robber is deleted from the graph. The focus is on determining the minimum number of cops needed to capture a robber on a graph $G$, called the {\em bridge-burning…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-12-27 William B. Kinnersley , Eric Peterson

Motivated by a biological scenario illustrated in the YouTube video \url{ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_mXDvZQ6dU} where a neutrophil chases a bacteria cell moving in random directions, we present a variant of the cop and robber game on…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2020-04-02 Pamela Harris , Erik Insko , Alicia Prieto-Langarica , Rade Stoisavljevic , Shaun Sullivan

This paper considers a game in which a single cop and a single robber take turns moving along the edges of a given graph $G$. If there exists a strategy for the cop which enables it to be positioned at the same vertex as the robber…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-08-20 Thomas Erlebach , Jakob T. Spooner