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Dominating Set


For a graph G and a subset S of the vertex set V(G), denote by N_G[S] the set of vertices in G which are in S or adjacent to a vertex in S. If N_G[S]=V(G), then S is said to be a dominating set (of vertices in G).

A dominating set of smallest size is called a minimum dominating set and its size is known as the domination number. A dominating set that is not a proper subset of any other dominating set is called a minimal dominating set.

DominatingSet

For example, in the Petersen graph illustrated above, the set S={1,2,9} is a dominating set (and, in fact, a minimum dominating set).

The domination polynomial encodes the numbers of dominating sets of various sizes.

Other variants of the usual dominating set can be defined, including the so-called total dominating set.

If a set is dominating and irredundant, it is maximal irredundant and minimal dominating (Mynhardt and Roux 2020).

A dominating set is minimal dominating iff it is irredundant (Mynhardt and Roux 2020).

Precomputed dominating sets for many named graphs can be obtained in the Wolfram Language using GraphData[graph, "DominatingSets"].


See also

Connected Domination Number, Domatic Number, Domatic Partition,Dominance, Domination Number, Domination Polynomial, Minimal Dominating Set, Minimum Dominating Set, Total Dominating Set

Portions of this entry contributed by Nicolas Bray

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References

Alikhani, S. and Peng, Y.-H. "Introduction to Domination Polynomial of a Graph." Ars Combin. 114, 257-266, 2014.Hedetniemi, S. T. and Laskar, R. C. "A. Bibliography on Dominating Sets in Graphs and Some Basic Definitions of Domination Parameters." Disc. Math. 86, 257-277, 1990.Mynhardt, C. M. and Roux, A. "Irredundance Graphs." 14 Apr. 2020. https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.03382.

Referenced on Wolfram|Alpha

Dominating Set

Cite this as:

Bray, Nicolas and Weisstein, Eric W. "Dominating Set." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/DominatingSet.html

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