Given a graph G = (V,E), a vertex subset S is called t-stable (or
t-dependent) if the subgraph G[S] induced on S has maximum degree at most t.
The t-stability number of G is the maximum order of a t-stable set in G. We
investigate the typical values that this parameter takes on a random graph on n
vertices and edge probability equal to p. For any fixed 0 < p < 1 and fixed
non-negative integer t, we show that, with probability tending to 1 as n grows,
the t-stability number takes on at most two values which we identify as
functions of t, p and n. The main tool we use is an asymptotic expression for
the expected number of t-stable sets of order k. We derive this expression by
performing a precise count of the number of graphs on k vertices that have
maximum degree at most k. Using the above results, we also obtain asymptotic
bounds on the t-improper chromatic number of a random graph (this is the
generalisation of the chromatic number, where we partition of the vertex set of
the graph into t-stable sets).Comment: 25 pages; v2 has 30 pages and is identical to the journal version
apart from formatting and a minor amendment to Lemma 8 (and its proof on p.
21