The forcing number of graphs with a given girth

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 non-colored. At each discrete time interval, a colored vertex with exactly one non-colored neighbor forces this non-colored neighbor to be colored. The initial set $S$ is called a forcing set of $G$ if, by iteratively applying the forcing process, every vertex in $G$ becomes colored. The forcing number, originally known as the \emph{zero forcing number}, and denoted $F(G)$, of $G$ is the cardinality of a smallest forcing set of $G$. We study lower bounds on the forcing number in terms of its minimum degree and girth, where the girth $g$ of a graph is the length of a shortest cycle in the graph. Let $G$ be a graph with minimum degree $\delta \ge 2$ and girth~$g \ge 3$. Davila and Kenter [Theory and Applications of Graphs, Volume 2, Issue 2, Article 1, 2015] conjecture that $F(G) \ge \delta + (\delta-2)(g-3)$. This conjecture has recently been proven for $g \le 6$. The conjecture is also proven when the girth $g \ge 7$ and the minimum degree is sufficiently large. In particular, it holds when $g = 7$ and $\delta \ge 481$, when $g = 8$ and $\delta \ge 649$, when $g = 9$ and $\delta \ge 30$, and when $g = 10$ and $\delta \ge 34$. In this paper, we prove the conjecture for $g \in \{7,8,9,10\}$ and for all values of $\delta \ge 2$.