Total domination in planar graphs of diameter two

MacGillivary and Seyffarth [G. MacGillivray, K. Seyffarth, Domination numbers of planar graphs, J. Graph Theory 22 (1996) 213-229] proved that planar graphs of diameter two have domination number at most three. Goddard and Henning [W. Goddard, M.A. Henning, Domination in planar graphs with small diameter,J. Graph Theory 40 (2002) 1-25] showed that there is a unique planar graph of diameter two with domination number three. It follows that the total domination number of a planar graph of diameter two is at most three. In this paper, we consider the problem of characterizing planargraphs with diameter two and total domination number three. We say that a graph satisfies the domination-cycle property if there is some minimum dominating set of the graph not contained in any induced 5-cycle. We characterize the planar graphs with diameter two and total domination number three that satisfy the domination-cycle property and show that there are exactly thirty-four such planar graphs. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.