The capture time in the game of cops and many robbers

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Gyergyek, Miha, Chenoweth, Vesna Iršič
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Gyergyek, Miha
Chenoweth, Vesna Iršič
author_facet Gyergyek, Miha
Chenoweth, Vesna Iršič
contents The game of cops and robber is a pursuit-evasion game played on graphs that has been extensively studied. Traditionally the game is played with one or more cops and only one robber, but in this paper we consider the game played with multiple robbers, with rules allowing for consecutive capture of the robbers. While the cop number remains the same, the capture time can differ drastically compared to the game played with one robber. In this paper we present general upper bounds for the capture time of cop-win graphs in the game with multiple robbers and show that they are the best possible for some families of graphs. Moreover, we explore how the capture time behaves with an increasing number of robbers and prove a surprising relation between this behavior and the 0-visibility cop number.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_10022
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The capture time in the game of cops and many robbers
Gyergyek, Miha
Chenoweth, Vesna Iršič
Combinatorics
05C57, 05C05, 05C75
The game of cops and robber is a pursuit-evasion game played on graphs that has been extensively studied. Traditionally the game is played with one or more cops and only one robber, but in this paper we consider the game played with multiple robbers, with rules allowing for consecutive capture of the robbers. While the cop number remains the same, the capture time can differ drastically compared to the game played with one robber. In this paper we present general upper bounds for the capture time of cop-win graphs in the game with multiple robbers and show that they are the best possible for some families of graphs. Moreover, we explore how the capture time behaves with an increasing number of robbers and prove a surprising relation between this behavior and the 0-visibility cop number.
title The capture time in the game of cops and many robbers
topic Combinatorics
05C57, 05C05, 05C75
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.10022