A new bound for the cops and robbers problem

Abstract

In this short paper we study the game of cops and robbers, which is played on the vertices of some fixed graph $G$. Cops and a robber are allowed to move along the edges of $G$ and the goal of cops is to capture the robber. The cop number $c(G)$ of $G$ is the minimum number of cops required to win the game. Meyniel conjectured a long time ago that $O(\sqrt{n})$ cops are enough for any connected $G$ on $n$ vertices. Improving several previous results, we prove that the cop number of $n$-vertex graph is at most $n 2^{-(1+o(1))\sqrt{\log n}}$.