Domination subdivision and domination multisubdivision numbers of graphs

Abstract

The \emph{domination subdivision number} sd$(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the minimum number of edges that must be subdivided (where an edge can be subdivided at most once) in order to increase the domination number of $G$. It has been shown \cite{vel} that sd$(T)\leq 3$ for any tree $T$. We prove that the decision problem of the domination subdivision number is NP-complete even for bipartite graphs. For this reason we define the \emph{domination multisubdivision number} of a nonempty graph $G$ as a minimum positive integer $k$ such that there exists an edge which must be subdivided $k$ times to increase the domination number of $G$. We show that msd$(G)\leq 3$ for any graph $G$. The domination subdivision number and the domination multisubdivision numer of a graph are incomparable in general case, but we show that for trees these two parameters are equal. We also determine domination multisubdivision number for some classes of graphs.