OFFSET
1,4
COMMENTS
a(n) is the smallest number of queens that can be placed on the diagonal of an n X n chessboard attacking all the cells on the chessboard. For large n the diagonal domination number exceeds the domination number.
The diagonal dominating set can be described by the set X of the x-coordinates of all the queens. Cockayne and Hedetniemi showed that for n greater than 1, set X has to be the complement to a midpoint-free even-sum set. Here midpoint-free means that the set doesn't contain an average of any two of its elements. Even-sum means that each sum of a pair of elements is even. Thus the problem of finding the diagonal domination number is equivalent to finding a largest midpoint-free even-sum set in the range 1-n.
LINKS
Irene Choi, Shreyas Ekanathan, Aidan Gao, Tanya Khovanova, Sylvia Zia Lee, Rajarshi Mandal, Vaibhav Rastogi, Daniel Sheffield, Michael Yang, Angela Zhao, and Corey Zhao, The Struggles of Chessland, arXiv:2212.01468 [math.HO], 2022.
E. J. Cockayne and S. T. Hedetniemi, On the diagonal queens domination problem, J. Combin. Theory Ser. A, 42, (1986), 137-139.
FORMULA
For n > 1, a(n) = A003002(floor((n+1)/2)).
EXAMPLE
Consider a 9 X 9 chessboard. The largest midpoint-free even-sum set has size 4. For example: 1, 3, 7, and 9 form such a subset. Thus, the queen's position diagonal domination number is 5 and queens can be placed on the diagonal in rows 2, 4, 5, 6, and 8 to dominate the board.
CROSSREFS
KEYWORD
nonn
AUTHOR
Tanya Khovanova and PRIMES STEP junior group, Oct 28 2022
STATUS
approved