Trees with Large Neighborhood Total Domination Number

TL;DR

This paper characterizes extremal trees with maximum neighborhood total domination number, specifically those achieving the upper bound of half the order, and extends the characterization to certain connected graphs.

Contribution

It provides a complete characterization of extremal trees for even order and relates these to connected graphs achieving the maximum neighborhood total domination number.

Findings

Characterization of extremal trees with maximum neighborhood total domination number for even n.

Extension of tree characterization to certain connected graphs.

Identification of specific graph classes achieving the upper bound.

Abstract

In this paper, we continue the study of neighborhood total domination in graphs first studied by Arumugam and Sivagnanam [Opuscula Math. 31 (2011), 519--531]. A neighborhood total dominating set, abbreviated NTD-set, in a graph $G$ is a dominating set $S$ in $G$ with the property that the subgraph induced by the open neighborhood of the set $S$ has no isolated vertex. The neighborhood total domination number, denoted by $\gnt(G)$, is the minimum cardinality of a NTD-set of $G$. Every total dominating set is a NTD-set, implying that $\gamma(G) \le \gnt(G) \le \gt(G)$, where $\gamma(G)$ and $\gt(G)$ denote the domination and total domination numbers of $G$, respectively. Arumugam and Sivagnanam posed the problem of characterizing the connected graphs $G$ of order $n \ge 3$ achieving the largest possible neighborhood total domination number, namely $\gnt(G) = \lceil n/2 \rceil$. A partial solution to this problem was presented by Henning and Rad [Discrete Applied Mathematics 161 (2013), 2460--2466] who showed that $5$-cycles and subdivided stars are the only such graphs achieving equality in the bound when $n$ is odd. In this paper, we characterize the extremal trees achieving equality in the bound when $n$ is even. As a consequence of this tree characterization, a characterization of the connected graphs achieving equality in the bound when $n$ is even can be obtained noting that every spanning tree of such a graph belongs to our family of extremal trees.