Grundy domination of forests and the strong product conjecture

TL;DR

This paper characterizes the Grundy domination number for forests, proves the strong product conjecture for forests, and explores properties of Grundy dominating sets in various graphs.

Contribution

It provides a formula for the Grundy domination number of forests and confirms the strong product conjecture for all forests.

Findings

The Grundy domination number of a forest is given by a specific formula involving caterpillar partitions.

The strong product conjecture holds for all forests, with the Grundy domination number of the product equal to the product of individual numbers.

Every connected graph has a spanning tree with a Grundy domination number at least as large as the original graph.

Abstract

A maximum sequence $S$ of vertices in a graph $G$, so that every vertex in $S$ has a neighbor which is independent, or is itself independent, from all previous vertices in $S$, is called a Grundy dominating sequence. The Grundy domination number, $\gamma_{gr}(G)$, is the length of $S$. We show that for any forest $F$, $\gamma_{gr}(F)=|V(T)|-|\mathcal{P}|$ where $\mathcal{P}$ is a minimum partition of the non-isolate vertices of $F$ into caterpillars in which if two caterpillars of $\mathcal{P}$ have an edge between them in $F$, then such an edge must be incident to a non-leaf vertex in at least one of the caterpillars. We use this result to show the strong product conjecture of B. Bre\v{s}ar, Cs. Bujt\'{a}s, T. Gologranc, S. Klav\v{z}ar, G. Ko\v{s}mrlj, B. Patk\'{o}s, Zs. Tuza, and M. Vizer, Dominating sequences in grid-like and toroidal graphs, Electron. J. Combin. 23(4): P4.34 (2016), for all forests. Namely, we show that for any forest $G$ and graph $H$, $\gamma_{gr}(G \boxtimes H) = \gamma_{gr}(G) \gamma_{gr}(H)$. We also show that every connected graph $G$ has a spanning tree $T$ so that $\gamma_{gr}(G)\le \gamma_{gr}(T)$ and that every non-complete connected graph contains a Grundy dominating set $S$ so that the induced subgraph of $S$ contains no isolated vertices.