On a conjecture of Gentner and Rautenbach

Abstract

Gentner and Rautenbach conjectured that the size of a minimum zero forcing set in a connected graph on $n$ vertices with maximum degree $3$ is at most $\frac{1}{3}n+2$. We disprove this conjecture by constructing a collection of connected graphs $\left\{G_n\right\}$ with maximum degree 3 of arbitrarily large order having zero forcing number at least $\frac{4}{9}\left|V\left(G_n\right)\right|$.