## Electronic Theses and Dissertations

#### Title

Walks and games on graphs

2020

2020

Dissertation

#### Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Bela Bollobas

Paul Balister

James Campbell

Alistair Windsor

#### Abstract

Herrman, Rebekah Ph.D. The University of Memphis, May 2020. Walks and Games on Graphs. Major Professor: B\'ela Bollob\'as, Ph.D.Chapter 1 is joint work with Dr. Travis Humble and appears in the journal Physical Review A. In this work, we consider continuous-time quantum walks on dynamic graphs. Continuous-time quantum walks have been well studied on graphs that do not change as a function of time. We offer a mathematical formulation for how to express continuous-time quantum walks on graphs that can change in time, find a universal set of walks that can perform any operation, and use them to simulate basic quantum circuits. This work was supported in part by the Department of Energy Student Undergraduate Laboratory Internship and the National Science Foundation Mathematical Sciences Graduate Internship programs.The $(t,r)$ broadcast domination number of a graph $G$, $\gamma_{t,r}(G)$, is a generalization of the domination number of a graph. In Chapter 2, we consider the $(t,r)$ broadcast domination number on graphs, specifically powers of cycles, powers of paths, and infinite grids. This work is joint with Peter van Hintum and has been submitted to the journal Discrete Applied Mathematics.Bridge-burning cops and robbers is a variant of the cops and robbers game on graphs in which the robber removes an edge from the graph once it is traversed. In Chapter 3, we study the maximum time it takes the cops to capture the robber in this variant. This is joint with Peter van Hintum and Dr. Stephen Smith.In Chapter 4, we study a variant of the chip-firing game called the \emph{diffusion game}. In the diffusion game, we begin with some integer labelling of the vertices of a graph, interpreted as a number of chips on each vertex, and for each subsequent step every vertex simultaneously fires a chip to each neighbour with fewer chips. In general, this could result in negative vertex labels. Long and Narayanan asked whether there exists an $f(n)$ for each $n$, such that whenever we have a graph on $n$ vertices and an initial allocation with at least $f(n)$ chips on each vertex, then the number of chips on each vertex will remain non-negative. We answer their question in the affirmative, showing further that $f(n)=n-2$ is the best possible bound. We also consider the existence of a similar bound $g(d)$ for each $d$, where $d$ is the maximum degree of the graph. This work is joint with Andrew Carlotti and has been submitted to the journal Discrete Mathematics.In Chapter 5, we consider the eternal game chromatic number of random graphs. The eternal graph colouring problem, recently introduced by Klostermeyer and Mendoza \cite{klostermeyer}, is a version of the graph colouring game, where two players take turns properly colouring a graph. In this chapter, we show that with high probability $\chi_{g}^{\infty}(G_{n,p}) = (\frac{p}{2} + o(1))n$ for odd $n$, and also for even $n$ when $p=\frac{1}{k}$ for some $k \in \N$. This work is joint with Vojt\u{e}ch Dvo\u{r}\'ak and Peter van Hintum, and has been submitted to the European Journal of Combinatorics.