Removing Twins in Graphs to Break Symmetries

Abstract

Determining vertex subsets are known tools to provide information about automorphism groups of graphs and, consequently about symmetries of graphs. In this paper, we provide both lower and upper bounds of the minimum size of such vertex subsets, called the determining number of the graph. These bounds, which are performed for arbitrary graphs, allow us to compute the determining number in two different graph families such are cographs and unit interval graphs.