Restrained Italian domination in graphs

¹ Faculty of Mathematical Sciences, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran
² Department of Mathematics, Nazarabad Center, Karaj Branch, Islamic Azad University, Karaj, Iran
³ Department of Mathematics, University of Tafresh, Tafresh, Iran
⁴ Department of Mathematics, University of Mazandaran, Babolsar, Iran

^* Corresponding author: samadibabak62@gmail.com

Received: 4 November 2020
Accepted: 12 February 2021

Abstract

For a graph G = (V(G), E(G)), an Italian dominating function (ID function) f : V(G) → {0,1,2} has the property that for every vertex v ∈ V(G) with f(v) = 0, either v is adjacent to a vertex assigned 2 under f or v is adjacent to least two vertices assigned 1 under f. The weight of an ID function is ∑_v∈V(G) f(v). The Italian domination number is the minimum weight taken over all ID functions of G. In this paper, we initiate the study of a variant of ID functions. A restrained Italian dominating function (RID function) f of G is an ID function of G for which the subgraph induced by {v ∈ V(G) | f(v) = 0} has no isolated vertices, and the restrained Italian domination number γ_rI (G) is the minimum weight taken over all RID functions of G. We first prove that the problem of computing this parameter is NP-hard, even when restricted to bipartite graphs and chordal graphs as well as planar graphs with maximum degree five. We prove that γrI(T) for a tree T of order n ≥ 3 different from the double star S_2,2 can be bounded from below by (n + 3)/2. Moreover, all extremal trees for this lower bound are characterized in this paper. We also give some sharp bounds on this parameter for general graphs and give the characterizations of graphs G with small or large γ_rI (G).