On the Metric Dimension of Cartesian Products of Graphs

A set of vertices $S$ resolves a graph $G$ if every vertex is uniquely determined by its vector of distances to the vertices in $S$. The metric dimension of $G$ is the minimum cardinality of a resolving set of $G$. This paper studies the metric dimension of cartesian products $G\,\square\,H$. We prove that the metric dimension of $G\,\square\,G$ is tied in a strong sense to the minimum order of a so-called doubly resolving set in $G$. Using bounds on the order of doubly resolving sets, we establish bounds on $G\,\square\,H$ for many examples of $G$ and $H$. One of our main results is a family of graphs $G$ with bounded metric dimension for which the metric dimension of $G\,\square\,G$ is unbounded.