Restrained Italian domination in trees

TL;DR

This paper characterizes trees where the restrained domination number equals the restrained Italian domination number, and trees where the Italian domination number is twice the restrained domination number, advancing understanding of these parameters.

Contribution

It provides characterizations of trees satisfying specific equalities between restrained and restrained Italian domination numbers, filling a gap in graph theory literature.

Findings

Identifies trees with equal restrained and Italian domination numbers.

Characterizes trees where the Italian domination number is twice the restrained domination number.

Abstract

Let $G=(V,E)$ be a graph. A subset $D$ of $V$ is a \textit{restrained dominating set} if every vertex in $V \setminus D$ is adjacent to a vertex in $D$ and to a vertex in $V \setminus D$. The \textit{restrained domination number}, denoted by $\gamma_r(G)$, is the smallest cardinality of a restrained dominating set of $G$. A function $f : V \rightarrow \{0, 1, 2\}$ is a \textit{restrained Italian dominating function} on $G$ if (i) for each vertex $v \in V$ for which $f(v)=0$, it holds that $\sum_{u \in N_G(v)} f(u) \geq 2$, (ii) the subgraph induced by $\{v \in V \mid f(v)=0 \}$ has no isolated vertices. The \textit{restrained Italian domination number}, denoted by $\gamma_{rI}(G)$, is the minimum weight taken over all restrained Italian dominating functions of $G$. It is known that $\gamma_r(G) \leq \gamma_{rI}(G) \leq 2\gamma_r(G)$ for any graph $G$. In this paper, we characterize the trees $T$ for which $\gamma_r(T) = \gamma_{rI}(T)$, and we also characterize the trees $T$ for which $\gamma_{rI}(T) = 2\gamma_r(T)$.