Some results for the two disjoint connected dominating sets problem

As a variant of minimum connected dominating set problem, two disjoint connected dominating sets (DCDS) problem is to ask whether there are two DCDS [Formula: see text] in a connected graph [Formula: see text] with [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text], and if not, how to add an edge subset with minimum cardinality such that the new graph has a pair of DCDS. The two DCDS problem is so hard that it is NP-hard on trees. In this paper, if the vertex set [Formula: see text] of a connected graph [Formula: see text] can be partitioned into two DCDS of [Formula: see text], then it is called a DCDS graph. First, a necessary but not sufficient condition is proposed for cubic (3-regular) graph to be a DCDS graph. To be exact, if a cubic graph is a DCDS graph, there are at most four disjoint triangles in it. Next, if a connected graph [Formula: see text] is a DCDS graph, a simple but nontrivial upper bound [Formula: see text] of the girth [Formula: see text] is presented.