General Properties on Differential Sets of a Graph.

Let G = (V , E) be a graph, and let β ∈ R . Motivated by a service coverage maximization problem with limited resources, we study the β -differential of G. The β-differential of G, denoted by ∂ β (G) , is defined as ∂ β (G) : = max { | B (S) | − β | S | s u c h t h a t S ⊆ V } . The case in which β = 1 is known as the differential of G, and hence ∂ β (G) can be considered as a generalization of the differential ∂ (G) of G. In this paper, upper and lower bounds for ∂ β (G) are given in terms of its order | G | , minimum degree δ (G) , maximum degree Δ (G) , among other invariants of G. Likewise, the β -differential for graphs with heavy vertices is studied, extending the set of applications that this concept can have. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]