Zero forcing irredundant sets

Abstract

Irredundance has been studied in the context of dominating sets, via the concept of private neighbor. Here irredundance of zero forcing sets is introduced via the concept of a private fort and the upper and lower zero forcing irrdedundance numbers $\mbox{ZIR}(G)$ and $\mbox{zir}(G)$ are defined. Bounds on $\mbox{ZIR}(G)$ and $\mbox{zir}(G)$ are established and graphs having extreme values of $\mbox{ZIR}(G)$ and $\mbox{zir}(G)$ are characterized. The effect of the join and corona operations is studied. As the concept of a zero forcing irrdedundant set is new, there are many questions for future research.