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The game of Cops and Robbers is a pursuit-evasion game on graphs that has been extensively studied in finite settings, particularly through the concept of cop number. In this paper, we explore infinite variants of the game, focusing on the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-09-04 Kenzie Fontenot , Iris Nguyen , Cody Olsen

\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

A classic result of Erd\H{o}s, Gy\'arf\'as and Pyber states that for every coloring of the edges of $K_n$ with $r$ colors, there is a cover of its vertex set by at most $f(r) = O(r^2 \log r)$ vertex-disjoint monochromatic cycles. In…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-07-18 Dániel Korándi , Frank Mousset , Rajko Nenadov , Nemanja Škorić , Benny Sudakov

The goal in the stochastic vertex cover problem is to obtain an approximately minimum vertex cover for a graph $G^\star$ that is realized by sampling each edge independently with some probability $p\in (0, 1]$ in a base graph $G = (V, E)$.…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-03-31 Jan van den Brand , Inge Li Gørtz , Chirag Pabbaraju , Debmalya Panigrahi , Clifford Stein , Miltiadis Stouras , Ola Svensson , Ali Vakilian

The burning number of a graph $G$ is the smallest positive integer $k$ such that the vertex set of $G$ can be covered with balls of radii $0, 1, \dots, k-1$. A well-known conjecture by Bonato, Janssen and Roshabin states that any connected…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-03-27 Anders Martinsson

K\H onig's theorem says that the vertex cover number of every bipartite graph is at most its matching number (in fact they are equal since, trivially, the matching number is at most the vertex cover number). An equivalent formulation of K\H…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-04-03 Louis DeBiasio , António Girão , Penny Haxell , Maya Stein

In many variants of the game of Cops and Robbers on graphs, multiple cops play against a single robber. In 2019, Cox and Sanaei introduced a variant of the game that gives the robber a more active role than simply evading the cop. In their…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-05-17 Joshua Carlson , Meghan Halloran , Carolyn Reinhart

The vertex cover problem is a famous combinatorial problem, and its complexity has been heavily studied. While a 2-approximation can be trivially obtained for it, researchers have not been able to approximate it better than 2-\textit{o}(1).…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2025-03-04 Majid Zohrehbandian

We give efficient distributed algorithms for the minimum vertex cover problem in bipartite graphs in the CONGEST model. From K\H{o}nig's theorem, it is well known that in bipartite graphs the size of a minimum vertex cover is equal to the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-11-20 Salwa Faour , Fabian Kuhn

We consider a cops and robber game where the cops are blocking edges of a graph, while the robber occupies its vertices. At each round of the game, the cops choose some set of edges to block and right after the robber is obliged to move to…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2020-09-09 Stratis Limnios , Christophe Paul , Joanny Perret , Dimitrios M. Thilikos

In this paper we give upper bounds on the number of minimal separators and potential maximal cliques of graphs w.r.t. two graph parameters, namely vertex cover ($\operatorname{vc}$) and modular width ($\operatorname{mw}$). We prove that for…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2014-04-16 Fedor V. Fomin , Mathieu Liedloff , Pedro Montealegre , Ioan Todinca

In the classical cop and robber game, two players, the cop C and the robber R, move alternatively along edges of a finite graph G. The cop captures the robber if both players are on the same vertex at the same moment of time. A graph G is…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2015-03-17 Jérémie Chalopin , Victor Chepoi , Nicolas Nisse , Yann Vaxès

An identifying code of a graph is a subset of its vertices such that every vertex of the graph is uniquely identified by the set of its neighbours within the code. We study the edge-identifying code problem, i.e. the identifying code…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2014-03-19 Florent Foucaud , Sylvain Gravier , Reza Naserasr , Aline Parreau , Petru Valicov

We present four models for a random graph and show that, in each case, the probability that a graph is intrinsically knotted goes to one as the number of vertices increases. We also argue that, for $k \geq 18$, most graphs of order $k$ are…

Geometric Topology · Mathematics 2018-11-27 Kazuhiro Ichihara , Thomas W. Mattman

Cops and Robber is a family of two-player games played on graphs in which one player controls a number of cops and the other player controls a robber. In alternating turns, each player moves (all) their figures. The cops try to capture the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-01-11 Minh Tuan Ha , Paul Jungeblut , Torsten Ueckerdt , Paweł Żyliński

Let $G$ be a graph of order $n$. A classical upper bound for the domination number of a graph $G$ having no isolated vertices is $\lfloor\frac{n}{2}\rfloor$. However, for several families of graphs, we have $\gamma(G) \le…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-12-09 Subramanian Arumugam , Suresh Manjanath Hegde , Shashanka Kulamarva

We characterize the connected graphs of given order $n$ and given independence number $\alpha$ that maximize the number of maximum independent sets. For $3\leq \alpha\leq n/2$, there is a unique such graph that arises from the disjoint…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-06-29 E. Mohr , D. Rautenbach

We introduce the game of Cops and Eternal Robbers played on graphs, where there are infinitely many robbers that appear sequentially over distinct plays of the game. A positive integer $t$ is fixed, and the cops are required to capture the…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2020-03-11 Anthony Bonato , Melissa Huggan , Trent Marbach , Fionn Mc Inerney

A good edge-labelling of a simple, finite graph is a labelling of its edges with real numbers such that, for every ordered pair of vertices (u,v), there is at most one nondecreasing path from u to v. In this paper we prove that any graph on…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2014-03-18 Abbas Mehrabian , Dieter Mitsche , Paweł Prałat

We study the problem of cops and robbers on the grid where the robber is allowed to move faster than the cops. It is well known that two cops are necessary and sufficient to catch the robber on any finite grid when the robber has unit…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2017-06-06 Paul Balister , Béla Bollobás , Bhargav Narayanan , Amy Shaw