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The burning and forcing processes are both instances of propagation processes on graphs that are commonly used to model real-world spreading phenomena. The contribution of this paper is two-fold. We first establish a connection between…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-02-16 Aida Abiad , Pax Mallee

Modeling how information travels throughout a network has vast applications across social sciences, cybersecurity, and graph-based neural networks. In this paper, we consider the zero forcing model for information diffusion on iterative…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-07-18 Christopher Brice , Erin Meger , Nhat-Dinh Nguyen , Allen Rakhamimov , Abigail Raz

\emph{Zero forcing number}, $Z(G)$, of a graph $G$ is the minimum cardinality of a set $S$ of black vertices (whereas vertices in $V(G) \setminus S$ are colored white) such that $V(G)$ is turned black after finitely many applications of…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2012-05-08 Cong X. Kang , Eunjeong Yi

This paper begins the study of reconfiguration of zero forcing sets, and more specifically, the zero forcing graph. Given a base graph $G$, its zero forcing graph, $\mathscr{Z}(G)$, is the graph whose vertices are the minimum zero forcing…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2020-09-02 Jesse Geneson , Ruth Haas , Leslie Hogben

The zero forcing number Z(G), which is the minimum number of vertices in a zero forcing set of a graph G, is used to study the maximum nullity / minimum rank of the family of symmetric matrices described by G. It is shown that for a…

Zero forcing is a coloring game played on a graph where each vertex is initially colored blue or white and the goal is to color all the vertices blue by repeated use of a (deterministic) color change rule starting with as few blue vertices…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-06-27 Yu Chan , Emelie Curl , Jesse Geneson , Leslie Hogben , Kevin Liu , Issac Odegard , Michael S. Ross

The \emph{zero forcing number} $Z(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the minimum cardinality of a set $S$ of black vertices (whereas vertices in $V(G)\setminusS$ are colored white) such that $V(G)$ is turned black after finitely many applications of…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2012-08-20 Cong X. Kang , Eunjeong Yi

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

The zero forcing number is a graph invariant introduced to study the minimum rank of the graph. In 2008, Aazami proved the NP-hardness of computing the zero forcing number of a simple undirected graph. We complete this NP-hardness result by…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2015-06-09 Maguy Trefois , Jean-Charles Delvenne

Zero forcing is a process that models the spread of information throughout a graph as white vertices are forced to turn blue using a color change rule. The idea of throttling, introduced in 2013 by Butler and Young, is to optimize the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-04-11 Jurgen Kritschgau , Josh Carlson

Zero forcing is a graph coloring process that is used to model spreading phenomena in real-world scenarios. It can also be viewed as a single-player combinatorial game on a graph, where the player's goal is to select a subset of vertices of…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-09-05 Aida Abiad , Maryam Moghaddas

The (disjoint) fort number and fractional zero forcing number are introduced and related to existing parameters including the (standard) zero forcing number. The fort hypergraph is introduced and hypergraph results on transversals and…

Amos et al. (Discrete Appl. Math. 181 (2015) 1-10) introduced the notion of the $k$-forcing number of graph for a positive integer $k$ as the generalization of the zero forcing number of a graph. The $k$-forcing number of a simple graph…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2015-07-07 Leihao Lu , Baoyindureng Wu , Zixing Tang

For a graph $G$ in which vertices are either black or white, a zero forcing process is an iterative vertex color changing process such that the only white neighbor of a black vertex becomes black in the next time step. A zero forcing set is…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-08-26 Hau-Yi Lin , Wu-Hsiung Lin , Gerard Jennhwa Chang

We give an algorithm that finds a zero forcing set which approximates the optimal size by a factor of $\text{pw}(G)+1$, where $\text{pw}(G)$ is the pathwidth of $G$. Starting from a path decomposition, the algorithm runs in $O(nm)$ time,…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-02-15 Ben Cameron , Jeannette Janssen , Rogers Matthew , Zhiyuan Zhang

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

In this paper, we study (zero) forcing sets which induce connected subgraphs of a graph. The minimum cardinality of such a set is called the connected forcing number of the graph. We provide sharp upper and lower bounds on the connected…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2016-05-10 Randy Davila , Michael Henning , Colton Magnant , Ryan Pepper

An $r$-fold analogue of the positive semidefinite zero forcing process that is carried out on the $r$-blowup of a graph is introduced and used to define the fractional positive semidefinite forcing number. Properties of the graph blowup…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2016-08-23 Leslie Hogben , Kevin F. Palmowski , David E. Roberson , Michael Young

Twisted hypercubes are graphs that generalize the structure of the hypercube by relaxing the symmetry constraint while maintaining degree-regularity and connectivity. We study the zero forcing number of twisted hypercubes. Zero forcing is a…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-05-06 Peter Collier , Jeannette Janssen

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