Roman domination and 2-independence in trees

Abstract

A Roman dominating function (RDF) on a graph [Formula: see text] is a function [Formula: see text] satisfying the condition that every vertex [Formula: see text] with [Formula: see text] is adjacent to at least one vertex [Formula: see text] of [Formula: see text] for which [Formula: see text]. The weight of a RDF is the sum [Formula: see text], and the minimum weight of a RDF [Formula: see text] is the Roman domination number [Formula: see text]. A subset [Formula: see text] of [Formula: see text] is a [Formula: see text]-independent set of [Formula: see text] if every vertex of [Formula: see text] has at most one neighbor in [Formula: see text] The maximum cardinality of a [Formula: see text]-independent set of [Formula: see text] is the [Formula: see text]-independence number [Formula: see text] Both parameters are incomparable in general, however, we show that if [Formula: see text] is a tree, then [Formula: see text]. Moreover, all extremal trees attaining equality are characterized.