Paired and induced-paired domination in (E,net)-free graphs

A dominating set of a graph is a vertex subset that any vertex belongs to or is adjacent to. Among the many well-studied variants of domination are the so-called paired-dominating sets. A paired-dominating set is a dominating set whose induced subgraph has a perfect matching. In this paper, we continue their study. We focus on graphs that do not contain the net-graph (obtained by attaching a pendant vertex to each vertex of the triangle) or the E-graph (obtained by attaching a pendant vertex to each vertex of the path on three vertices) as induced subgraphs. This graph class is a natural generalization of (claw,net)-free graphs, which are intensively studied with respect to their nice properties concerning domination and hamiltonicity. We show that any connected (E,net)-free graph has a paired-dominating set that, roughly, contains at most half of the vertices of the graph. This bound is a significant improvement to the known general bounds. Further, we show that any (E,net, C_5 )-free graph has an induced paired-dominating set, that is a paired-dominating set that forms an induced matching, and that such set can be chosen to be a minimum paired-dominating sets. We use these results to obtain a new characterization of (E,net, C_5 )-free graphs in terms of the hereditary existence of induced paired-dominating sets. Finally, we show that the induced matching formed by an induced paired-dominating set in a (E,net, C_5 )-free graph can be chosen to have at most two times the size of the smallest maximal induced matching possible