Changing upper irredundance by edge addition Original Research Article

Denote the upper irredundance number of a graph G by IR(G). A graph G is IR-edge-addition-sensitive if its upper irredundance number changes whenever an edge of Ḡ is added to G. Specifically, G is IR-edge-critical (IR+-edge-critical, respectively) if IR(G+e)IR(G), respectively) for each edge e of Ḡ. We show that if G is IR-edge-addition-sensitive, then G is either IR-edge-critical or IR+-edge-critical. We obtain properties of the latter class of graphs, particularly in the case where β(G)=IR(G)=2 (where β(G) denotes the vertex independence number of G). This leads to an infinite class of IR+-edge-critical graphs where IR(G)=2.