Identifying vertices in graphs and digraphs

Abstract

The closed neighbourhood of a vertex in a graph is the vertex together with the set of adjacent vertices. A di®erentiating-dominating set, or identifying code, is a collection of vertices whose intersection with the closed neighbour- hoods of each vertex is distinct and nonempty. A di®erentiating-dominating set in a graph serves to uniquely identify all the vertices in the graph. Chapter 1 begins with the necessary de¯nitions and background results and provides motivation for the following chapters. Chapter 1 includes a summary of the lower identi¯cation parameters, °L and °d. Chapter 2 de- ¯nes co-distinguishable graphs and determines bounds on the number of edges in graphs which are distinguishable and co-distinguishable while Chap- ter 3 describes the maximum number of vertices needed in order to identify vertices in a graph, and includes some Nordhaus-Gaddum type results for the sum and product of the di®erentiating-domination number of a graph and its complement. Chapter 4 explores criticality, in which any minor modi¯cation in the edge or vertex set of a graph causes the di®erentiating-domination number to change. Chapter 5 extends the identi¯cation parameters to allow for orientations of the graphs in question and considers the question of when adding orientation helps reduce the value of the identi¯cation parameter. We conclude with a survey of complexity results in Chapter 6 and a collection of interesting new research directions in Chapter 7.