TY - JOUR
T1 - Towards the Small Quasi-Kernel Conjecture
AU - Kostochka, Alexandr V.
AU - Luo, Ruth
AU - Shan, Songling
N1 - \u2217Supported by NSF grants DMS1600592 and DMS-2153507, and by Arnold O. Beckman Campus Research Board Award RB20003 of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. \u2020Supported by NSF grant DMS1902808. \u2021Supported by NSF grant DMS2153938.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Let D = (V, A) be a digraph. A vertex set K ⊆ V is a quasi-kernel of D if K is an independent set in D and for every vertex v ∈ V \ K, v is at most distance 2 from K. In 1974, Chvátal and Lovász proved that every digraph has a quasi-kernel. P. L. Erdős and L. A. Székely in 1976 conjectured that if every vertex of D has a positive indegree, then D has a quasi-kernel of size at most |V |/2. This conjecture is only confirmed for narrow classes of digraphs, such as semicomplete multipartite, quasi-transitive, or locally semicomplete digraphs. In this note, we state a similar conjecture for all digraphs, show that the two conjectures are equivalent, and prove that both conjectures hold for a class of digraphs containing all orientations of 4-colorable graphs (in particular, of all planar graphs).
AB - Let D = (V, A) be a digraph. A vertex set K ⊆ V is a quasi-kernel of D if K is an independent set in D and for every vertex v ∈ V \ K, v is at most distance 2 from K. In 1974, Chvátal and Lovász proved that every digraph has a quasi-kernel. P. L. Erdős and L. A. Székely in 1976 conjectured that if every vertex of D has a positive indegree, then D has a quasi-kernel of size at most |V |/2. This conjecture is only confirmed for narrow classes of digraphs, such as semicomplete multipartite, quasi-transitive, or locally semicomplete digraphs. In this note, we state a similar conjecture for all digraphs, show that the two conjectures are equivalent, and prove that both conjectures hold for a class of digraphs containing all orientations of 4-colorable graphs (in particular, of all planar graphs).
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U2 - 10.37236/11043
DO - 10.37236/11043
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85137317435
SN - 1077-8926
VL - 29
JO - Electronic Journal of Combinatorics
JF - Electronic Journal of Combinatorics
IS - 3
M1 - P3.49
ER -