On irreversible dynamic monopolies in general graphs

Abstract: Consider the following coloring process in a simple directed graph $G(V,E)$ with positive indegrees. Initially, a set $S$ of vertices are white, whereas all the others are black. Thereafter, a black vertex is colored white whenever more than half of its in-neighbors are white. The coloring process ends when no additional vertices can be colored white. If all vertices end up white, we call $S$ an irreversible dynamic monopoly (or dynamo for short) under the strict-majority scenario. An irreversible dynamo under the simple-majority scenario is defined similarly except that a black vertex is colored white when at least half of its in-neighbors are white. We derive upper bounds of $(2/3)\,|\,V\,|$ and $|\,V\,|/2$ on the minimum sizes of irreversible dynamos under the strict and the simple-majority scenarios, respectively. For the special case when $G$ is an undirected connected graph, we prove the existence of an irreversible dynamo with size at most $\lceil |\,V\,|/2 \rceil$ under the strict-majority scenario. Let $\epsilon>0$ be any constant. We also show that, unless $\text{NP}\subseteq \text{TIME}(n^{O(\ln \ln n)}),$ no polynomial-time, $((1/2-\epsilon)\ln |\,V\,|)$-approximation algorithms exist for finding the minimum irreversible dynamo under either the strict or the simple-majority scenario. The inapproximability results hold even for bipartite graphs with diameter at most 8.