k-Efficient domination: Algorithmic perspective

Abstract

A set [Formula: see text] of a graph [Formula: see text] is called an efficient dominating set of [Formula: see text] if every vertex [Formula: see text] has exactly one neighbor in [Formula: see text], in other words, the vertex set [Formula: see text] is partitioned to some circles with radius one such that the vertices in [Formula: see text] are the centers of partitions. A generalization of this concept, introduced by Chellali et al. [k-Efficient partitions of graphs, Commun. Comb. Optim. 4 (2019) 109–122], is called [Formula: see text]-efficient dominating set that briefly partitions the vertices of graph with different radiuses. It leads to a partition set [Formula: see text] such that each [Formula: see text] consists a center vertex [Formula: see text] and all the vertices in distance [Formula: see text], where [Formula: see text]. In other words, there exist the dominators with various dominating powers. The problem of finding minimum set [Formula: see text] is called the minimum [Formula: see text]-efficient domination problem. Given a positive integer [Formula: see text] and a graph [Formula: see text], the [Formula: see text]-efficient Domination Decision problem is to decide whether [Formula: see text] has a [Formula: see text]-efficient dominating set of cardinality at most [Formula: see text]. The [Formula: see text]-efficient Domination Decision problem is known to be NP-complete even for bipartite graphs [M. Chellali, T. W. Haynes and S. Hedetniemi, k-Efficient partitions of graphs, Commun. Comb. Optim.  4 (2019) 109–122]. Clearly, every graph has a [Formula: see text]-efficient dominating set but it is not correct for efficient dominating set. In this paper, we study the following: [Formula: see text]-efficient domination problem set is NP-complete even in chordal graphs. A polynomial-time algorithm for [Formula: see text]-efficient domination in trees. [Formula: see text]-efficient domination on sparse graphs from the parametrized complexity perspective. In particular, we show that it is [Formula: see text]-hard on d-degenerate graphs while the original dominating set has Fixed Parameter Tractable (FPT) algorithm on d-degenerate graphs. [Formula: see text]-efficient domination on nowhere-dense graphs is FPT.