Guarding isometric subgraphs and cops and robber in planar graphs

Abstract

In the game of Cops and Robbers, one of the most useful results is that an isometric path in a graph can be guarded by one cop. In this paper, we introduce the concept of wide shadow in a subgraph, and use it to characterize all 1-guardable graphs. As an application, we show that 3 cops can capture a robber in any planar graph with the added restriction that at most two cops can move simultaneously, proving a conjecture of Yang and strengthening a classical result of Aigner and Fromme.