Outer independent double Roman domination in unicyclic and bicyclic graphs

Abstract

An outer independent double Roman dominating function (OIDRDF) of a graph \( G \) is a function \( f:V(G)\rightarrow\{0,1,2,3\} \) satisfying the following conditions:
(i) every vertex \( v \) with \( f(v)=0 \) is adjacent to a vertex assigned 3 or at least two vertices assigned 2;
(ii) every vertex \( v \) with \( f(v)=1 \) has a neighbor assigned 2 or 3;
(iii) no two vertices assigned 0 are adjacent.
The weight of an OIDRDF is the sum of its function values over all vertices, and the outer independent double Roman domination number \( \gamma_{oidR}(G) \) is the minimum weight of an OIDRDF on \( G \). Ahangar et al. [Appl. Math. Comput. 364 (2020) 124617] established that for every tree \( T \) of order \( n \geq 4 \), \( \gamma_{oidR}(T)\leq\frac{5}{4}n \) and posed the question of whether this bound holds for all connected graphs. In this paper, we show that for a unicyclic graph \( G \) of order \( n \), \( \gamma_{oidR}(G) \leq \frac{5n+2}{4} \), and for a bicyclic graph, \( \gamma_{oidR}(G) \leq \frac{5n+4}{4} \). We further characterize the graphs attaining these bounds, providing a negative answer to the question posed by Ahangar et al.