On decycling and forest numbers of Cartesian products of trees

Abstract: The decycling number $\nabla(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the minimum number of vertices that must be removed to eliminate all cycles in $G$. The forest number $f(G)$ is the maximum number of vertices that induce a forest in $G$. So $\nabla(G) + f(G) = |V(G)|$. For the Cartesian product $T \,\square\, T'$ of trees $T$ and $T'$ it is proved that $\nabla(S_n \,\square\, S_{n'}) \leq \nabla(T \,\square\, T')$, thus resolving the conjecture of Wang and Wu asserting that $f(T \,\square\, T') \leq f(S_n \,\square\, S_{n'})$. It is shown that $\nabla(T \,\square\, T') \ge |V(T)| - 1$ and the equality cases characterized. For prisms over trees, it is proved that $\nabla(T\,\square\, K_2) = \alpha'(T)$, and for arbitrary graphs $G_1$ and $G_2$, it is proved that $\nabla(G_1 \,\square\, G_2) \geq \alpha'(G_1) \alpha'(G_2)$, where $\alpha'$ is the matching number.