The directional localization game on graphs

Abstract

In the localization game on a graph $G$, a team of cops searches for an invisible, mobile robber on $G$ by "probing" vertices; each probe tells the cops the distance from the probed vertex to the robber. The cops win if they can uniquely determine the robber's location. In this paper, we introduce a related game: the directional localization game. In this game, instead of probes returning distances, they return directions: when the cops probe a vertex $v$, the robber must respond with one or more neighbors of $v$ that lie on a shortest path from $v$ to the robber's location. The minimum number of cops needed to win this game on $G$ is the directional localization number of $G$. We study the directional localization game on several classes of graphs, including chordal graphs, Cartesian products, and incidence graphs of projective planes. We also bound the directional localization number of a graph $G$ in terms of the degeneracy and the treewidth of $G$.