Complexity and characterization aspects of edge-related domination for graphs (Q2023127)

Let \(G=(V,E)\) be a connected graph. A subset \(F\) of \(E\) is an edge dominating set (resp. a total edge dominating set) if every edge in \(E \setminus F\) (resp. in \(E\)) is adjacent to at least one edge in \(F\). The minimum cardinality of an edge dominating set (resp. a total edge dominating set) of \(G\) is the edge domination number (resp. total edge domination number) of \(G\), denoted by \(\gamma^\prime(G)\) (resp. \(\gamma_t^\prime(G)\)). A semitotal edge dominating set is an edge dominating set \(S\) such that, for every edge \(e\) in \(S\), there exists such an edge \(e^\prime\) in \(S\) that \(e\) either is adjacent to \(e^\prime\) or shares a common neighbor edge with \(e^\prime\). The semitotal edge domination number, denoted by \(\gamma_{st}^\prime (G)\), is the minimum cardinality of a semitotal edge dominating set of \(G\). It is obvious from definitions that \(\gamma'(G)\le \gamma_{st}^\prime (G) \le \gamma_t^\prime(G)\). In this paper, the authors first prove that the problem of deciding whether \(\gamma^\prime(G) = \gamma_{st}^\prime (G)\) is NP-hard in planar bipartite graphs with maximum degree 4, and then prove that the problem of deciding whether \(\gamma^\prime(G) = \gamma_{t}^\prime (G)\) is NP-hard in planar graphs with maximum degree 4, respectively. Furthermore, they characterize trees with equal edge domination and semitotal edge domination numbers.