On the geodetic and the hull numbers in strong product graphs

A set S of vertices of a connected graph G is convex, if for any pair of vertices u; v 2 S, every shortest path joining u and v is contained in S . The convex hull CH(S) of a set of vertices S is defined as the smallest convex set in G containing S. The set S is geodetic, if every vertex of G lies on some shortest path joining two vertices in S, and it is said to be a hull set if its convex hull is V(G). The geodetic and the hull numbers of G are the cardinality of a minimum geodetic and a minimum hull set, respectively. In this work, we investigate the behavior of both geodetic and hull sets with respect to the strong product operation for graphs. We also stablish some bounds for the geodetic number and the hull number and obtain the exact value of these parameters for a number of strong product graphs.Comment: 22 pages, 9 figure

Structure and properties of maximal outerplanar graphs.

Outerplanar graphs are planar graphs that have a plane embedding in which each vertex lies on the boundary of the exterior region. An outerplanar graph is maximal outerplanar if the graph obtained by adding an edge is not outerplanar. Maximal outerplanar graphs are also known as triangulations of polygons. The spine of a maximal outerplanar graph G is the dual graph of G without the vertex that corresponds to the exterior region. In this thesis we study metric properties involving geodesic intervals, geodetic sets, Steiner sets, different concepts of boundary, and also relationships between the independence numbers and domination numbers of maximal outerplanar graphs and their spines. In Chapter 2 we find an extension of a result by Beyer, et al. [3] that deals with Hamiltonian degree sequences in maximal outerplanar graphs. In Chapters 3 and 4 we give sharp bounds relating the independence number and domination number, respectively, of a maximal outerplanar graph to those of its spine. In Chapter 5 we discuss the boundary, contour, eccentricity, periphery, and extreme set of a graph. We give a characterization of the boundary of maximal outerplanar graphs that involves the degrees of vertices. We find properties that characterize the contour of a maximal outerplanar graph. The other main result of this chapter gives characterizations of graphs induced by the contour and by the periphery of a maximal outerplanar graph. In Chapter 6 we show that the generalized intervals in a maximal outerplanar graph are convex. We use this result to characterize geodetic sets in maximal outerplanar graphs. We show that every Steiner set in a maximal outerplanar graph is a geodetic set and also show some differences between these types of sets. We present sharp bounds for geodetic numbers and Steiner numbers of maximal outerplanar graphs