Locating-dominating sets and identifying codes in graphs of girth at least 5

Locating-dominating sets and identifying codes are two closely related notions in the area of separating systems. Roughly speaking, they consist in a dominating set of a graph such that every vertex is uniquely identified by its neighbourhood within the dominating set. In this paper, we study the size of a smallest locating-dominating set or identifying code for graphs of girth at least 5 and of given minimum degree. We use the technique of vertex-disjoint paths to provide upper bounds on the minimum size of such sets, and construct graphs who come close to meet these bounds.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figure

Partitions of graphs into small and large sets

Let $G$ be a graph on $n$ vertices. We call a subset $A$ of the vertex set $V(G)$ \emph{$k$-small} if, for every vertex $v \in A$, $\deg(v) \le n - |A| + k$. A subset $B \subseteq V(G)$ is called \emph{$k$-large} if, for every vertex $u \in B$, $\deg(u) \ge |B| - k - 1$. Moreover, we denote by $\varphi_k(G)$ the minimum integer $t$ such that there is a partition of $V(G)$ into $t$ $k$-small sets, and by $\Omega_k(G)$ the minimum integer $t$ such that there is a partition of $V(G)$ into $t$ $k$-large sets. In this paper, we will show tight connections between $k$-small sets, respectively $k$-large sets, and the $k$-independence number, the clique number and the chromatic number of a graph. We shall develop greedy algorithms to compute in linear time both $\varphi_k(G)$ and $\Omega_k(G)$ and prove various sharp inequalities concerning these parameters, which we will use to obtain refinements of the Caro-Wei Theorem, the Tur\'an Theorem and the Hansen-Zheng Theorem among other things.Comment: 21 page

New approach to the k-independence number of a graph

Let G = (V,E) be a graph and k > 0 an integer. A k-independent set S V is a set of vertices such that the maximum degree in the graph induced by S is at most k. With k(G) we denote the maximum cardinality of a k-independent set of G. We prove that, for a graph G on n vertices and average degree d, k(G) > k+1 dde+k+1n, improving the hitherto best general lower bound due to Caro and Tuza [Improved lower bounds on k-independence, J. Graph Theory 15 (1991), 99–107].Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version