On the minimal forts of trees

Abstract: In 2008, the zero forcing number of a graph was shown to be an upper bound on the graph's maximum nullity. In 2018, the concept of forts was introduced to provide a set covering characterization of zero forcing sets. Since then, forts have been integrated into integer programming models for zero forcing and have been used to yield bounds on the zero forcing number. In 2025, researchers explored the combinatorial question of how many minimal forts a graph can have. They demonstrated that the number of minimal forts in a graph with an order of at least six is strictly less than Sperner's bound. Moreover, the authors derived an explicit formula for the number of minimal forts in path, cycle, and spider graphs. For example, the number of minimal forts in a path graph aligns with the Padovan sequence, and thus exhibits exponential growth. In this article, we demonstrate that no tree with an order of $n$ can have fewer than $n/3$ minimal forts. Additionally, we provide a characterization of the trees that possess exactly $n/3$ minimal forts. We conjecture that the $n/3$ bound is valid for all graphs of order $n$. We present experimental evidence supporting this conjecture and prove that it holds for all Eulerian graphs.