Zero Forcing in Claw-Free Cubic Graphs

Abstract

In this paper, we study a dynamic coloring of the vertices of a graph G that starts with an initial subset S of colored vertices, with all remaining vertices being uncolored. At each discrete time interval, a colored vertex with exactly one uncolored neighbor forces this uncolored neighbor to be colored. The initial set S is a zero forcing set of G if, by iteratively applying the forcing process, every vertex in G becomes colored. The zero forcing number Z(G) of G is the minimum cardinality of a zero forcing set of G. In this paper, we prove that if G is a connected, cubic, claw-free graph of order $$n \ge 6$$, then $$Z(G) \le \alpha (G) + 1$$ where $$\alpha (G)$$ denotes the independence number of G. Further we prove that if $$n \ge 10$$, then $$Z(G) \le \frac{1}{3}n + 1$$. Both bounds are shown to be best possible.