dominating sets in strongkstrong-majority tournaments.pdfVIP

Dominating Sets in k-Majority Tournaments Noga Alon∗ Graham Brightwell† H. A. Kierstead‡ A. V. Kostochka§ Peter Winkler¶ August 25, 2005 Abstract A k-majority tournament T on a finite vertex set V is defined by a set of 2k − 1 linear orderings of V , with u → v if and only if u lies above v in at least k of the orders. Motivated in part by the phenomenon of “non-transitive dice”, we let F (k) be the maximum over all k-majority tournaments T of the size of a minimum dominating set of T . We show that F (k) exists for all k 0, that F (2) = 3 and that in general C k/ log k ≤ F (k) ≤ 1 C k log k for suitable positive constants C and C . 2 1 2 1 Introduction Let T = (V, E) be a tournament. For vertices x, y ∈ V we say that x dominates y and write x → y if xy ∈ E or x = y . Similarly, for vertex sets X, Y ⊆ V we say that X dominates Y and write X → Y if for every y ∈ Y there exists x ∈ X such that x → y . In the case that X or Y is a singleton we may replace the set by its unique element in this notation. A dominating set in T is a set X ⊆ V such that X → V . For a positive integer n, let [n] denote the set {1, 2, . . . , n}. Let P , . . . , P be linear orders on a finite set V . The tournament T realized by the orders 1 2k−1 P , . . . , P is the tournament on V in which an ordered pair uv is a directed edge if and only if u 1