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Vesna Iršič

Publications and source records attributed to Vesna Iršič.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

The burning game on graphs

Motivated by the burning and cooling processes, the burning game is introduced. Two players (Burner and Staller) play the game on a graph $G$ by alternately selecting vertices of $G$ to burn; as in the burning process, burning vertices spread fire to unburned neighbors. Burner aims to burn all vertices of $G$ as quickly as possible, while Staller wants the process to last as long as possible. If both players play optimally, then the number of time steps needed to burn the whole graph $G$ is the game burning number $b_{\rm g}(G)$ if Burner makes the first move, and the Staller-start game burning number $b_{\rm g}'(G)$ if Staller starts. In this paper, basic bounds on $b_{\rm g}(G)$ are given and several fundamental properties of the burning game established. Graphs with small game burning numbers are characterized and the game is studied on paths and cycles. An analogue of the burning number conjecture for the burning game is also considered. Finally, it is shown that the problem of determining whether or not $b_{\rm g}(G) \le k$ is NP-hard.

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arXiv2025

Trail Trap: a variant of Partizan Edge Geography

We study a two-player game played on undirected graphs called {\sc Trail Trap}, which is a variant of a game known as {\sc Partizan Edge Geography}. One player starts by choosing any edge and moving a token from one endpoint to the other; the other player then chooses a different edge and does the same. Alternating turns, each player moves their token along an unused edge from its current vertex to an adjacent vertex, until one player cannot move and loses. We present an algorithm to determine which player has a winning strategy when the graph is a tree and partially characterize the trees on which a given player wins. Additionally, we show that it is NP-hard to determine if Player~2 has a winning strategy on {\sc Trail Trap} from the starting position, even for connected bipartite planar graphs with maximum degree $4$. We determine which player has a winning strategy for certain subclasses of complete bipartite graphs and grid graphs, and we propose several open problems for further study.

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arXiv2024

Packing and finding paths in sparse random graphs

Let $G\sim G(n,p)$ be a (hidden) Erdős-Rényi random graph with $p=(1+ \varepsilon)/n$ for some fixed constant $ \varepsilon >0$. Ferber, Krivelevich, Sudakov, and Vieira showed that to reveal a path of length $\ell=Ω\left(\frac{\log(1/ \varepsilon)}{ \varepsilon}\right)$ in $G$ with high probability, one must query the adjacency of $Ω\left(\frac{\ell}{p \varepsilon\log(1/ \varepsilon)}\right)$ pairs of vertices in $G$, where each query may depend on the outcome of all previous queries. Their result is tight up to the factor of $\log(1/ \varepsilon)$ in both $\ell$ and the number of queries, and they conjectured that this factor could be removed. We confirm their conjecture. The main ingredient in our proof is a result about path-packings in random labelled trees of independent interest. Using this, we also give a partial answer to a related question of Ferber, Krivelevich, Sudakov, and Vieira. Namely, we show that when $\ell=o\left((t/\log t)^{1/3}\right)$, the maximum number of vertices covered by edge-disjoint paths of length at least $\ell$ in a random labelled tree of size $t$ is $Θ(t/\ell)$ with high probability.

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arXiv2024

Subgraph-universal planar graphs for trees

We show that there exists an outerplanar graph on $O(n^{c})$ vertices for $c = \log_2(3+\sqrt{10}) \approx 2.623$ that contains every tree on $n$ vertices as a subgraph. This extends a result of Chung and Graham from 1983 who showed that there exist (non-planar) $n$-vertex graphs with $O(n \log n)$ edges that contain all trees on $n$ vertices as subgraphs and a result from Gol'dberg and Livshits from 1968 who showed that there exists a universal tree for $n$-vertex trees on $n^{O(\log(n))}$ vertices. Furthermore, we determine the number of vertices needed in the worst case for a planar graph to contain three given trees as subgraph to be on the order of $\frac{3}{2}n$, even if the three trees are caterpillars. This answers a question recently posed by Alecu et al. in 2024. Lastly, we investigate (outer)planar graphs containing all (outer)planar graphs as subgraph, determining exponential lower bounds in both cases. We also construct a planar graph on $n^{O(\log(n))}$ vertices containing all $n$-vertex outerplanar graphs as subgraphs.

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arXiv2024

On the interval coloring impropriety of graphs

An improper interval (edge) coloring of a graph $G$ is an assignment of colors to the edges of $G$ satisfying the condition that, for every vertex $v \in V(G)$, the set of colors assigned to the edges incident with $v$ forms an integral interval. An interval coloring is $k$-improper if at most $k$ edges with the same color all share a common endpoint. The minimum integer $k$ such that there exists a $k$-improper interval coloring of the graph $G$ is the interval coloring impropriety of $G$, denoted by $μ_{int}(G)$. In this paper, we provide a construction of an interval coloring of a subclass of complete multipartite graphs. This provides additional evidence to the conjecture by Casselgren and Petrosyan that $μ_{int}(G)\leq 2$ for all complete multipartite graphs $G$. Additionally, we determine improved upper bounds on the interval coloring impropriety of several classes of graphs, namely 2-trees, iterated triangulations, and outerplanar graphs. Finally, we investigate the interval coloring impropriety of the corona product of two graphs, $G\odot H$.

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arXiv2024

Indicated domination game

Motivated by the success of domination games and by a variation of the coloring game called the indicated coloring game, we introduce a version of domination games called the indicated domination game. It is played on an arbitrary graph $G$ by two players, Dominator and Staller, where Dominator wants to finish the game in as few rounds as possible while Staller wants just the opposite. In each round, Dominator indicates a vertex $u$ of $G$ that has not been dominated by previous selections of Staller, which, by the rules of the game, forces Staller to select a vertex in the closed neighborhood of $u$. The game is finished when all vertices of $G$ become dominated by the vertices selected by Staller. Assuming that both players are playing optimally according to their goals, the number of selected vertices during the game is the indicated domination number, $γ_i(G)$, of $G$. We prove several bounds on the indicated domination number expressed in terms of other graph invariants. In particular, we find a place of the new graph invariant in the well-known domination chain, by showing that $γ_i(G)\ge Γ(G)$ for all graphs $G$, and by showing that the indicated domination number is incomparable with the game domination number and also with the upper irredundance number. In connection with the trivial upper bound $γ_i(G)\le n(G)-δ(G)$, we characterize the class of graphs $G$ attaining the bound provided that $n(G)\ge 2δ(G)+2$. We prove that in trees, split graphs and grids the indicated domination number equals the independence number. We also find a formula for the indicated domination number of powers of paths, from which we derive that there exist graphs in which the indicated domination number is arbitrarily larger than the upper irredundance number.

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arXiv2024

Cops and Robber on Hyperbolic Manifolds

The Cops and Robber game on geodesic spaces is a pursuit-evasion game with discrete steps which captures the behavior of the game played on graphs, as well as that of continuous pursuit-evasion games. One of the outstanding open problems about the game on graphs is to determine which graphs embeddable in a surface of genus $g$ have largest cop number. It is known that the cop number of genus $g$ graphs is $O(g)$ and that there are examples whose cop number is $\tildeΩ(\sqrt{g}\,)$. The same phenomenon occurs when the game is played on geodesic surfaces. In this paper we obtain a surprising result about the game on a surface with constant curvature. It is shown that two cops have a strategy to come arbitrarily close to the robber, independently of the genus. We also discuss upper bounds on the number of cops needed to catch the robber. Our results generalize to higher-dimensional hyperbolic manifolds.

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arXiv2024

General position polynomials

A subset of vertices of a graph $G$ is a general position set if no triple of vertices from the set lie on a common shortest path in $G$. In this paper we introduce the general position polynomial as $\sum_{i \geq 0} a_i x^i$, where $a_i$ is the number of distinct general position sets of $G$ with cardinality $i$. The polynomial is considered for several well-known classes of graphs and graph operations. It is shown that the polynomial is not unimodal in general, not even on trees. On the other hand, several classes of graphs, including Kneser graphs $K(n,2)$, with unimodal general position polynomials are presented.

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arXiv2023

Domination of subcubic planar graphs with large girth

Since Reed conjectured in 1996 that the domination number of a connected cubic graph of order $n$ is at most $\lceil \frac13 n \rceil$, the domination number of cubic graphs has been extensively studied. It is now known that the conjecture is false in general, but Henning and Dorbec showed that it holds for graphs with girth at least $9$. Zhu and Wu stated an analogous conjecture for 2-connected cubic planar graphs. In this paper, we present a new upper bound for the domination number of subcubic planar graphs: if $G$ is a subcubic planar graph with girth at least 8, then $γ(G) < n_0 + \frac{3}{4} n_1 + \frac{11}{20} n_2 + \frac{7}{20} n_3$, where $n_i$ denotes the number of vertices in $G$ of degree $i$, for $i \in \{0,1,2,3\}$. We also prove that if $G$ is a subcubic planar graph with girth at least 9, then $γ(G) < n_0 + \frac{13}{17} n_1 + \frac{9}{17} n_2 + \frac{6}{17} n_3$.

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arXiv2023

Generalized Pell graphs

In this paper, generalized Pell graphs $Π_{n,k}$, $k\ge 2$, are introduced. The special case of $k=2$ are the Pell graphs $Π_{n}$ defined earlier by Munarini. Several metric, enumerative, and structural properties of these graphs are established. The generating function of the number of edges of $Π_{n,k}$ and the generating function of its cube polynomial are determined. The center of $Π_{n,k}$ is explicitly described; if $k$ is even, then it induces the Fibonacci cube $Γ_{n}$. It is also shown that $Π_{n,k}$ is a median graph, and that $Π_{n,k}$ embeds into a Fibonacci cube.

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arXiv2021

Predominating a vertex in the connected domination game

The connected domination game is played just as the domination game, with an additional requirement that at each stage of the game the vertices played induce a connected subgraph. The number of moves in a D-game (an S-game, resp.) on a graph $G$ when both players play optimally is denoted by $γ_{\rm cg}(G)$ ($γ_{\rm cg}'(G)$, resp.). Connected Game Continuation Principle is established as a substitute for the classical Continuation Principle which does not hold for the connected domination game. Let $G|x$ denote the graph $G$ together with a declaration that the vertex $x$ is already dominated. The first main result asserts that if $G$ is a graph with $γ_{\rm cg}(G) \geq 3$ and $x \in V(G)$, then $γ_{\rm cg}(G|x) \leq 2 γ_{\rm cg}(G) - 3$ and the bound is sharp. The second main theorem states that if $G$ is a graph with $n(G) \geq 2$ and $x \in V(G)$, then $γ_{\rm cg}(G|x) \geq \left \lceil \frac12 γ_{\rm cg}(G) \right \rceil$ and the bound is sharp. Graphs $G$ and their vertices $x$ for which $γ_{\rm cg}'(G|x) = \infty$ holds are also characterized.

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arXiv2021

The domination game played on diameter 2 graphs

Let $γ_g(G)$ be the game domination number of a graph $G$. It is proved that if ${\rm diam}(G) = 2$, then $γ_g(G) \le \left\lceil \frac{n(G)}{2} \right\rceil- \left\lfloor \frac{n(G)}{11}\right\rfloor$. The bound is attained: if ${\rm diam}(G) = 2$ and $n(G) \le 10$, then $γ_g(G) = \left\lceil \frac{n(G)}{2} \right\rceil$ if and only if $G$ is one of seven sporadic graphs with $n(G)\le 6$ or the Petersen graph, and there are exactly ten graphs of diameter $2$ and order $11$ that attain the bound.

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arXiv2021

Fibonacci-run graphs I: basic properties

Among the classical models for interconnection networks are hypercubes and Fibonacci cubes. Fibonacci cubes are induced subgraphs of hypercubes obtained by restricting the vertex set to those binary strings which do not contain consecutive 1s, counted by Fibonacci numbers. Another set of binary strings which are counted by Fibonacci numbers are those with a restriction on the runlengths. Induced subgraphs of the hypercube on the latter strings as vertices define Fibonacci-run graphs. They have the same number of vertices as Fibonacci cubes, but fewer edges and different connectivity properties. We obtain properties of Fibonacci-run graphs including the number of edges, the analogue of the fundamental recursion, the average degree of a vertex, Hamiltonicity, special degree sequences, and the number of hypercubes they contain. A detailed study of the degree sequences of Fibonacci-run graphs is interesting in its own right and is reported in a companion paper.

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arXiv2020

Comparing Wiener complexity with eccentric complexity

The transmission of a vertex $v$ of a graph $G$ is the sum of distances from $v$ to all the other vertices in $G$. The Wiener complexity of $G$ is the number of different transmissions of its vertices. Similarly, the eccentric complexity of $G$ is defined as the number of different eccentricities of its vertices. In this paper these two complexities are compared. The complexities are first studied on Cartesian product graphs. Transmission indivisible graphs and arithmetic transmission graphs are introduced to demonstrate sharpness of upper and lower bounds on the Wiener complexity, respectively. It is shown that for almost all graphs the Wiener complexity is not smaller than the eccentric complexity. This property is proved for trees, the equality holding precisely for center-regular trees. Several families of graphs in which the complexities are equal are constructed. Using the Cartesian product, it is proved that the eccentric complexity can be arbitrarily larger than the Wiener complexity. Additional infinite families of graphs with this property are constructed by amalgamating universally diametrical graphs with center-regular trees.

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arXiv2020

$1/2$-conjectures on the domination game and claw-free graphs

Let $γ_g(G)$ be the game domination number of a graph $G$. Rall conjectured that if $G$ is a traceable graph, then $γ_g(G) \le \left\lceil \frac{1}{2}n(G)\right\rceil$. Our main result verifies the conjecture over the class of line graphs. Moreover, in this paper we put forward the conjecture that if $δ(G) \geq 2$, then $γ_g(G) \leq \left\lceil \frac{1}{2}n(G) \right\rceil$. We show that both conjectures hold true for claw-free cubic graphs. We further prove the upper bound $γ_g(G) \le \left\lceil \frac{11}{20} \, n(G) \right\rceil$ over the class of claw-free graphs of minimum degree at least $2$. Computer experiments supporting the new conjecture and sharpness examples are also presented.

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arXiv2020

Fibonacci-run graphs II: Degree sequences

Fibonacci cubes are induced subgraphs of hypercube graphs obtained by restricting the vertex set to those binary strings which do not contain consecutive 1s. This class of graphs has been studied extensively and generalized in many different directions. Induced subgraphs of the hypercube on binary strings with restricted runlengths as vertices define Fibonacci-run graphs. These graphs have the same number of vertices as Fibonacci cubes, but fewer edges and different graph theoretical properties. Basic properties of Fibonacci-run graphs are presented in a companion paper, while in this paper we consider the nature of the degree sequences of Fibonacci-run graphs. The generating function we obtain is a refinement of the generating function of the degree sequences, and has a number of corollaries, obtained as specializations. We also obtain several properties of Fibonacci-run graphs viewed as a partially ordered set, and discuss its embedding properties.

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