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Related papers: Cops & Robber on Periodic Temporal Graphs

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\textsc{Cops and Robber} is a game played on graphs where a set of \textit{cops} aim to \textit{capture} the position of a single \textit{robber}. The main parameter of interest in this game is the \textit{cop number}, which is the minimum…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-12-29 Harmender Gahlawat

We prove new theoretical results about several variations of the cop and robber game on graphs. First, we consider a variation of the cop and robber game which is more symmetric called the cop and killer game. We prove for all $c < 1$ that…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2017-11-01 Espen Slettnes , Carl Joshua Quines , Shen-Fu Tsai , Jesse Geneson

A \emph{periodic graph} ${\cal G}=(G_0, G_1, G_2, \dots)$ with period $p$ is an infinite periodic sequence of graphs $G_i = G_{i + p} = (V,E_i)$, where $i \geq 0$. The graph $G=(V,\cup_i E_i)$ is called the footprint of ${\cal G}$.…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-10-30 Jean-Lou De Carufel , Paola Flocchini , Nicola Santoro , Frédéric Simard

Cops and robbers is a vertex-pursuit game played on graphs. In the classical cops-and-robbers game, a set of cops and a robber occupy the vertices of the graph and move alternately along the graph's edges with perfect information about each…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2018-06-12 Ziyuan Gao , Boting Yang

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

We consider a variant of the Cops and Robber game, in which the robber has unbounded speed, i.e. can take any path from her vertex in her turn, but she is not allowed to pass through a vertex occupied by a cop. Let c_{infty}(G) denote the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2014-03-18 Abbas Mehrabian

We investigate extremal graphs related to the game of Cops and Robbers. We focus on graphs where a single cop can catch the robber; such graphs are called cop-win. The capture time of a cop-win graph is the minimum number of moves the cop…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-03-21 David Offner , Kerry Ojakian

The game of Cops and Robber is traditionally played on a finite graph. The purpose of this paper is to introduce and analyse the game that is played on an arbitrary geodesic space (a compact, path-connected space endowed with intrinsic…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2026-01-14 Bojan Mohar

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

We study the vertex pursuit game of \emph{Cops and Robbers}, in which cops try to capture a robber on the vertices of the graph. The minimum number of cops required to win on a given graph $G$ is called the cop number of $G$. We focus on…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2014-06-12 Noga Alon , Pawel Pralat

The 'Cheating Robot' version of Cops and Robbers is played on a finite, simple, connected graph. The players move in the same time period. However, before moving, the robot observes to which vertices the cops are moving and it is fast…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-03-12 Melissa A. Huggan , Richard J. Nowakowski

We introduce the game of Surrounding Cops and Robbers on a graph, as a variant of the original game of Cops and Robbers. In contrast to the original game in which the cops win by occupying the same vertex as the robber, they now win by…

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 game of \emph{Cops and Robber} is usually played on a graph, where a group of cops attempt to catch a robber moving along the edges of the graph. The \emph{cop number} of a graph is the minimum number of cops required to win the game.…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-04-29 Joshua Erde , Mihyun Kang , Florian Lehner , Bojan Mohar , Dominik Schmid

The game of cops and robber is a turn based vertex pursuit game played on a connected graph between a team of cops and a single robber. The cops and the robber move alternately along the edges of the graph. We say the team of cops win the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-11-30 Uttam K. Gupta , Suchismita Mishra , Dinabandhu Pradhan

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 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 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 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

Cops and robbers is a game between two players, where one tries to catch the other by moving along the edges of a graph. It is well known that on a finite graph the cop has a winning strategy if and only if the graph is constructible and…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2015-03-31 Florian Lehner