On the Fractional fixing number of graphs

Abstract

An automorphism group of a graph $G$ is the set of all permutations of the vertex set of $G$ that preserve adjacency and non adjacency of vertices in a graph. A fixing set of a graph $G$ is a subset of vertices of $G$ such that only the trivial automorphism fixes every vertex in $S$. Minimum cardinality of a fixing set of $G$ is called the fixing number of $G$. In this article, we define a fractional version of the fixing number of a graph. We formulate the problem of finding the fixing number of a graph as an integer programming problem. It is shown that a relaxation of this problem leads to a linear programming problem and hence to a fractional version of the fixing number of a graph. We also characterize the graphs $G$ with the fractional fixing number $\frac{|V(G)|}{2}$ and the fractional fixing number of some families of graphs is also obtained.