Types of triangle in plane Hamiltonian triangulations and applications to domination and k-walks

We investigate the minimum number t(0)(G) of faces in a Hamiltonian triangulation G so that any Hamiltonian cycle C of G has at least t(0)(G) faces that do not contain an edge of C. We prove upper and lower bounds on the maximum of these numbers for all triangulations with a fixed number of facial triangles. Such triangles play an important role when Hamiltonian cycles in triangulations with 3-cuts are constructed from smaller Hamiltonian cycles of 4-connected subgraphs. We also present results linking the number of these triangles to the length of 3-walks in a class of triangulation and to the domination number

Domination number of annulus triangulations

An {\em annulus triangulation} $G$ is a 2-connected plane graph with two disjoint faces $f_1$ and $f_2$ such that every face other than $f_1$ and $f_2$ are triangular, and that every vertex of $G$ is contained in the boundary cycle of $f_1$ or $f_2$. In this paper, we prove that every annulus triangulation $G$ with $t$ vertices of degree 2 has a dominating set with cardinality at most $\lfloor \frac{|V(G)|+t+1}{4} \rfloor$ if $G$ is not isomorphic to the octahedron. In particular, this bound is best possible

Isolation of squares in graphs

Given a set $\mathcal{F}$ of graphs, we call a copy of a graph in $\mathcal{F}$ an $\mathcal{F}$-graph. The $\mathcal{F}$-isolation number of a graph $G$, denoted by $\iota(G,\mathcal{F})$, is the size of a smallest subset $D$ of the vertex set $V(G)$ such that the closed neighbourhood of $D$ intersects the vertex sets of the $\mathcal{F}$-graphs contained by $G$ (equivalently, $G - N[D]$ contains no $\mathcal{F}$-graph). Thus, $\iota(G,\{K_1\})$ is the domination number of $G$. The second author showed that if $\mathcal{F}$ is the set of cycles and $G$ is a connected $n$-vertex graph that is not a triangle, then $\iota(G,\mathcal{F}) \leq \left \lfloor \frac{n}{4} \right \rfloor$. This bound is attainable for every $n$ and solved a problem of Caro and Hansberg. A question that arises immediately is how smaller an upper bound can be if $\mathcal{F} = \{C_k\}$ for some $k \geq 3$, where $C_k$ is a cycle of length $k$. The problem is to determine the smallest real number $c_k$ (if it exists) such that for some finite set $\mathcal{E}_k$ of graphs, $\iota(G, \{C_k\}) \leq c_k |V(G)|$ for every connected graph $G$ that is not an $\mathcal{E}_k$-graph. The above-mentioned result yields $c_3 = \frac{1}{4}$ and $\mathcal{E}_3 = \{C_3\}$. The second author also showed that if $k \geq 5$ and $c_k$ exists, then $c_k \geq \frac{2}{2k + 1}$. We prove that $c_4 = \frac{1}{5}$ and determine $\mathcal{E}_4$, which consists of three $4$-vertex graphs and six $9$-vertex graphs. The $9$-vertex graphs in $\mathcal{E}_4$ were fully determined by means of a computer program. A method that has the potential of yielding similar results is introduced.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figure. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2110.0377

A generalization of the Art Gallery Theorem

Several domination results have been obtained for maximal outerplanar graphs (mops). The classical domination problem is to minimize the size of a set $S$ of vertices of an $n$-vertex graph $G$ such that $G - N[S]$, the graph obtained by deleting the closed neighborhood of $S$, contains no vertices. A classical result of Chv\'{a}tal, the Art Gallery Theorem, tells us that the minimum size is at most $n/3$ if $G$ is a mop. Here we consider a modification by allowing $G - N[S]$ to have a maximum degree of at most $k$. Let $\iota_k(G)$ denote the size of a smallest set $S$ for which this is achieved. If $n \le 2k+3$, then trivially $\iota_k(G) \leq 1$. Let $G$ be a mop on $n \ge \max\{5,2k+3\}$ vertices, $n_2$ of which are of degree~$2$. Sharp bounds on $\iota_k(G)$ have been obtained for $k = 0$ and $k = 1$, namely $\iota_{0}(G) \le \min\{\frac{n}{4},\frac{n+n_2}{5},\frac{n-n_2}{3}\}$ and $\iota_1(G) \le \min\{\frac{n}{5},\frac{n+n_2}{6},\frac{n-n_2}{3}\}$. We prove that $\iota_{k}(G) \le \min\{\frac{n}{k+4},\frac{n+n_2}{k+5},\frac{n-n_2}{k+2}\}$ for any $k \ge 0$, and that this bound is sharp. We also prove that $\frac{n-n_2}{2}$ is a sharp upper bound on the domination number of $G$.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1903.1229