We compute the complexity of two infinite families of finite graphs: the Sierpiński graphs, which are finite approximations of the well-known Sierpińsky gasket, and the Schreier graphs of the Hanoi Towers group $H^{(3)}$ acting on the rooted ternary tree. For both of them, we study the weighted generating functions of the spanning trees, associated with several natural labellings of the edge sets.
The weighted spanning tree enumerator of a graph $G$ with weighted edges is the sum of the products of edge weights over all the spanning trees in $G$. In the special case that all of the edge weights equal $1$, the weighted spanning tree enumerator counts the number of spanning trees in $G$. The Weighted Matrix-Tree Theorem asserts that the weighted spanning tree enumerator can be calculated from the determinant of a reduced weighted Laplacian matrix of $G$. That determinant, however, is not always easy to compute. In this paper, we show how two well-known results from linear algebra, the Mat…
We classify connected spanning convex subgraphs of the square cycles. We then show that every spanning tree of $C_n^2$ is contained in a unique nontrivial connected spanning convex subgraph of $C_n^2$. As a result, we obtain a purely combinatorial derivation of the formula for the number of spanning trees of the square cycles.
Halin conjectured 20 years ago that a graph has a normal spanning tree if and only if every minor of it has countable colouring number. We prove Halin's conjecture. This implies a forbidden minor characterisation for the property of having a normal spanning tree.
Schmidt characterised the class of rayless graphs by an ordinal rank function, which makes it possible to prove statements about rayless graphs by transfinite induction. Halin asked whether Schmidt's rank function can be generalised to characterise other important classes of graphs. We answer Halin's question in the affirmative. Another largely open problem raised by Halin asks for a characterisation of the class of graphs with an end-faithful spanning tree. A well-studied subclass is formed by the graphs with a normal spanning tree. We determine a larger subclass, the class of normally tracea…
For integer $k\geq2,$ a spanning $k$-ended-tree is a spanning tree with at most $k$ leaves. Motivated by the closure theorem of Broersma and Tuinstra [Independence trees and Hamilton cycles, J. Graph Theory 29 (1998) 227--237], we provide tight spectral conditions to guarantee the existence of a spanning $k$-ended-tree in a connected graph of order $n$ with extremal graphs being characterized. Moreover, by adopting Kaneko's theorem [Spanning trees with constraints on the leaf degree, Discrete Appl. Math. 115 (2001) 73--76], we also present tight spectral conditions for the existence of a spann…
A 2-tree is a graph that can be formed by starting with a triangle and iterating the operation of making a new vertex adjacent to two adjacent vertices of the existing graph. Leizhen Cai asked in 1995 whether every maximal planar graph contains a spanning 2-tree. We answer this question in the negative by constructing an infinite class of maximal planar graphs that have no spanning 2-tree.
Completely independent spanning trees in a graph $G$ are spanning trees of $G$ such that for any two distinct vertices of $G$, the paths between them in the spanning trees are pairwise edge-disjoint and internally vertex-disjoint. In this paper, we present a tight lower bound on the maximum number of completely independent spanning trees in $L(G)$, where $L(G)$ denotes the line graph of a graph $G$. Based on a new characterization of a graph with $k$ completely independent spanning trees, we also show that for any complete graph $K_n$ of order $n \geq 4$, there are $\lfloor \frac{n+1}{2} \rflo…
Albertson, Berman, Hutchinson, and Thomassen showed in 1990 that there exist highly connected graphs in which every spanning tree contains vertices of degree 2. Using a result of Alon and Wormald, we show that there exists a natural number $d$ such that every graph of minimum degree at least $d$ contains a spanning tree without adjacent vertices of degree 2. Moreover, we prove that every graph with minimum degree at least 3 has a spanning tree without three consecutive vertices of degree 2.
We present two short proofs for Diestel's criterion that a connected graph has a normal spanning tree provided it contains no subdivision of a countable clique in which every edge has been replaced by uncountably many parallel edges.
In this paper we study the flow-property of graphs containing a spanning triangle-tree. Our main results provide a structure characterization of graphs with a spanning triangle-tree admitting a nowhere-zero $3$-flow. All these graphs without nowhere-zero $3$-flows are constructed from $K_4$ by a so-called bull-growing operation. This generalizes a result of Fan et al. in 2008 on triangularly-connected graphs and particularly shows that every $4$-edge-connected graph with a spanning triangle-tree has a nowhere-zero $3$-flow. A well-known classical theorem of Jaeger in 1979 shows that every grap…
We give a proof for sharp estimate for the number of spanning trees using linear algebra and generalize this bound to multigraphs. In addition, we show that this bound is tight for complete graphs. In addition, we give estimates for number of spanning trees in specific type of graphs such as product of graphs or Cartesian product of two graphs.
A spanning tree of a properly edge-colored complete graph, $K_n$, is rainbow provided that each of its edges receives a distinct color. In 1996, Brualdi and Hollingsworth conjectured that if $K_{2m}$ is properly $(2m-1)$-edge-colored, then the edges of $K_{2m}$ can be partitioned into $m$ rainbow spanning trees except when $m=2$. By means of an explicit, constructive approach, in this paper we construct $\lfloor \sqrt{6m+9}/3 \rfloor$ mutually edge-disjoint rainbow spanning trees for any positive value of $m$. Not only are the rainbow trees produced, but also some structure of each rainbow spa…
We show that a graph $G$ has a normal spanning tree if and only if its vertex set is the union of countably many sets each separated from any subdivided infinite clique in $G$ by a finite set of vertices. This proves a conjecture by Brochet and Diestel from 1994, giving a common strengthening of two classical normal spanning tree criterions due to Jung and Halin. Moreover, our method gives a new, algorithmic proof of Halin's theorem that every connected graph not containing a subdivision of a countable clique has a normal spanning tree.
Random spanning trees of a graph $G$ are governed by a corresponding probability mass distribution (or "law"), $μ$, defined on the set of all spanning trees of $G$. This paper addresses the problem of choosing $μ$ in order to utilize the edges as "fairly" as possible. This turns out to be equivalent to minimizing, with respect to $μ$, the expected overlap of two independent random spanning trees sampled with law $μ$. In the process, we introduce the notion of homogeneous graphs. These are graphs for which it is possible to choose a random spanning tree so that all edges have equal usage probab…
We consider all spanning trees of a complete simple graph $Γ$ on $n$ vertices that contain a given $m-$forest $F$. We show that the number of such spanning trees, $τ(F)$, doesn't depend on the structure of $F$ and is completely determined by the number of vertices $q_i \, (i=1, ..., m)$ in each connected component of $F$. Specifically, $τ(F) = q_1 q_2 \cdots q_m n^{m-2}$.
In this paper, we derive closed-form formulas for Kirchhoff index and Wiener index of linear pentagonal cylinder graph and linear pentagonal Mobius chain graph. We also obtain explicit formulas for finding total number of spanning trees for both the graphs.
It is well-known that the number of spanning trees, denoted by $τ(G)$, in a connected multi-graph $G$ can be calculated by the Matrix-Tree theorem and Tutte's deletion-contraction theorem. In this short note, we find an alternate method to compute $τ(G)$ by degrees of vertices.
In this article, we extend Moon's classic formula for counting spanning trees in complete graphs containing a fixed spanning forest to complete bipartite graphs. Let $(X,Y)$ be the bipartition of the complete bipartite graph $K_{m,n}$ with $|X|=m$ and $|Y|=n$. We prove that for any given spanning forest $F$ of $K_{m,n}$ with components $T_1,T_2,\ldots,T_k$, the number of spanning trees in $K_{m,n}$ which contain all edges in $F$ is equal to $$ \frac 1{mn}\left(\prod_{i=1}^k (m_in+n_im)\right) \left (1-\sum_{i=1}^{k}\frac{m_in_i}{m_in+n_im}\right ), $$ where $m_i=|V(T_i)\cap X|$ and $n_i=|V(T_i…
