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arXiv · 2509.05024

Capturing an Invisible Robber using Separators

Igor Potapov·Tymofii Prokopenko·John Sylvester
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Abstract

We study the zero-visibility cops and robbers game, where the robber is invisible to the cops until they are caught. This differs from the classic game where full information about the robber's location is known at any time. A previously known solution for capturing a robber in the zero-visibility case is based on the pathwidth decomposition. We provide an alternative solution based on a separation hierarchy, improving capture time and space complexity without asymptotically increasing the zero-visibility cop number in most cases. In addition, we provide a better bound on the approximate zero-visibility cop number for various classes of graphs, where approximate refers to the restriction to polynomial time computable strategies.

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Igor Potapov, Tymofii Prokopenko, John Sylvester. 2025-09-05. Capturing an Invisible Robber using Separators. https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.05024

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