A New Lower Bound on the Density of Vertex Identifying Codes for the Infinite Hexagonal Grid

Abstract

Given a graph $G$, an identifying code $C \subseteq V(G)$ is a vertex set such that for any two distinct vertices $v_1,v_2\in V(G)$, the sets $N[v_1]\cap C$ and $N[v_2]\cap C$ are distinct and nonempty (here $N[v]$ denotes a vertex $v$ and its neighbors). We study the case when $G$ is the infinite hexagonal grid $H$. Cohen et.al. constructed two identifying codes for $H$ with density $3/7$ and proved that any identifying code for $H$ must have density at least $16/39\approx0.410256$. Both their upper and lower bounds were best known until now. Here we prove a lower bound of $12/29\approx0.413793$.