English

Domination by kings is oddly even

Combinatorics 2024-07-30 v1

Abstract

The m×nm \times n king graph consists of all locations on an m×nm \times n chessboard, where edges are legal moves of a chess king. %where each vertex represents a square on a chessboard and each edge is a legal move. Let Pm×n(z)P_{m \times n}(z) denote its domination polynomial, i.e., SVzS\sum_{S \subseteq V} z^{|S|} where the sum is over all dominating sets SS. We prove that Pm×n(1)=(1)m/2n/2P_{m \times n}(-1) = (-1)^{\lceil m/2\rceil \lceil n/2\rceil}. In particular, the number of dominating sets of even size and the number of odd size differs by ±1\pm 1. %The numbers can not be equal because the total number of dominating sets is always odd. This property does not hold for king graphs on a cylinder or a torus, or for the grid graph. But it holds for dd-dimensional kings, where Pn1×n2××nd(1)=(1)n1/2n2/2nd/2P_{n_1\times n_2\times\cdots\times n_d}(-1) = (-1)^{\lceil n_1/2\rceil \lceil n_2/2\rceil\cdots \lceil n_d/2\rceil}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2407.19344,
  title  = {Domination by kings is oddly even},
  author = {Cristopher Moore and Stephan Mertens},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.19344},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

8 pages, 3 figures, 3 tables

R2 v1 2026-06-28T17:55:39.307Z