A pebbling move on a graph consists of taking two pebbles off of one vertex and placing one pebble on an adjacent vertex. In the traditional pebbling problem we try to reach a specified vertex of the graph by a sequence of pebbling moves. In this paper we investigate the case when every vertex of the graph must end up with at least one pebble after a series of pebbling moves. The cover pebbling number of a graph is the minimum number of pebbles such that however the pebbles are initially placed on the vertices of the graph we can eventually put a pebble on every vertex simultaneously. We find the cover pebbling numbers of trees and some other graphs. We also consider the more general problem where (possibly different) given numbers of pebbles are required for the vertices.
We survey results on the pebbling numbers of graphs as well as their historical connection with a number-theoretic question of Erdős and Lemke. We also present new results on two probabilistic pebbling considerations, first the random graph threshold for the property that the pebbling number of a graph equals its number of vertices, and second the pebbling threshold function for various natural graph sequences. Finally, we relate the question of the existence of pebbling thresholds to a strengthening of the normal property of posets, and show that the multiset lattice is not supernormal. 1991 AMS Subject Classification: 05C99 (05D05, 06A07, 11B75, 90D43)
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