On the Concentration of the Domination Number of the Random Graph

Abstract

In this paper we study the behaviour of the domination number of the Erdős-Rényi random graph $\mathcal{G}(n,p)$. Extending a result of Wieland and Godbole we show that the domination number of $\mathcal{G}(n,p)$ is equal to one of two values asymptotically almost surely whenever $p\gg \frac{{\ln }^{2}n}{\sqrt{n}}$. The explicit values are exactly at the first moment threshold, that is where the expected number of dominating sets starts to tend to infinity. For small $p$ we also provide various non-concentration results which indicate why some sort of lower bound on the probability $p$ is necessary in our first theorem. Concentration, though not on a constant length interval, is proven for every $p\gg 1/n$. These results show that unlike in the case of $p\gg \frac{{\ln }^{2}n}{\sqrt{n}}$ where concentration of the domination number happens around the first moment threshold, for $p=O(\ln n/n)$ it does so around the median. In particular, in this range the two are far apart from each other.