Graphs with span 1 and shortest optimal walks

Abstract

A span of a given graph G is the maximum distance that two players can keep at all times while visiting all vertices (edges) of G and moving according to certain rules, that produces different variants of span. We prove that the vertex and edge span of the same variant can differ by at most 1 and present a graph where the difference is exactly 1. For all variants of vertex span we present a lower bound in terms of the girth of the graph. Then we study graphs with the strong vertex span equal to 1. We present some nice properties of such graphs and show that interval graphs are contained in the class of graphs having the strong vertex span equal to 1. Finally, we present an algorithm that returns the minimum number of moves needed for both players to traverse all vertices of the given graph G such that in each move the distance between players equals at least the chosen vertex span of G.