We prove that every connected graph with $s$ vertices of degree not 2 has a spanning tree with at least ${1\over 4}(s-2)+2$ leaves.
Let $G$ be a be a connected graph of girth $g$ with $v>1$ vertices. Let maximal chain of successively adjacent vertices of degree 2 in the graph $G$ does not exceed $k\ge 1$. We prove that $G$ has a spanning tree with at least $α_{g,k}(v(G)-k-2)+2$ leaves, where $α_{g,k}= {[{g+1\over2}]\over [{g+1\over2}](k+3)+1}$ for $k<g-2$; $α_{g,k}= {g-2\over (g-1)(k+2)}$ for $k\ge g-2$.
We present infinite series of examples showing that all these bounds are exact.
In this paper, we prove that every $n$-vertex connected $K_{1,5}$-free graph $G$ with $σ_4(G)\geq n-1$ contains a spanning tree with at most $5$ leaves and branch vertices in total. Moreover, the degree sum condition "$σ_4(G)\geq n-1$" is best possible.
In 2009, Kyaw proved that every $n$-vertex connected $K_{1,4}$-free graph $G$ with $σ_4(G)\geq n-1$ contains a spanning tree with at most $3$ leaves. In this paper, we prove an analogue of Kyaw's result for connected $K_{1,5}$-free graphs. We show that every $n$-vertex connected $K_{1,5}$-free graph $G$ with $σ_5(G)\geq n-1$ contains a spanning tree with at most $4$ leaves. Moreover, the degree sum condition `$σ_5(G)\geq n-1$' is best possible.
Let $T$ be a tree, a vertex of degree one is called a leaf. The set of leaves of $T$ is denoted by $Leaf(T)$. The subtree $T-Leaf(T)$ of $T$ is called the stem of $T$ and denoted by $Stem(T).$ In this note, we give a sharp sufficient condition to show that a $K_{1,t}-$free graph has a spanning tree whose stem has a few leaves. By applying the main result, we give improvements of previous related results.
It is known that graphs on n vertices with minimum degree at least 3 have spanning trees with at least n/4+2 leaves and that this can be improved to (n+4)/3 for cubic graphs without the diamond K_4-e as a subgraph. We generalize the second result by proving that every graph with minimum degree at least 3, without diamonds and certain subgraphs called blossoms, has a spanning tree with at least (n+4)/3 leaves, and generalize this further by allowing vertices of lower degree. We show that it is necessary to exclude blossoms in order to obtain a bound of the form n/3+c. We use the new bound to ob…
We prove that every connected graph with $s$ vertices of degree~1 and 3 and $t$ vertices of degree at least~4 has a spanning tree with at least ${1\over 3}t +{1\over 4}s+{3\over 2}$ leaves. We present infinite series of graphs showing that our bound is tight.
Let $T$ be a tree. A vertex of degree one is a \emph{leaf} of $T$ and a vertex of degree at least three is a \emph{branch vertex} of $T$. A graph is said to be \emph{$K_{1,4}$-free} if it does not contain $K_{1,4}$ as an induced subgraph. In this paper, we study the spanning trees with a bounded number of leaves and branch vertices of $K_ {1,4}$-free graphs. Applying the main results, we also give some improvements of previous results on the spanning tree with few branch vertices for the case of $K_{1,4}$-free graphs.
Let $T$ be a tree, a vertex of degree one is a leaf of $T$ and a vertex of degree at least three is a branch vertex of $T$. For two distinct vertices $u,v$ of $T$, let $P_T[u,v]$ denote the unique path in $T$ connecting $u$ and $v.$ For a leaf $x$ of $T$, let $y_x$ denote the nearest branch vertex to $x$. For every leaf $x$ of $T$, we remove the path $P_T [x, y_x)$ from $T$, where $P_T [x, y_x)$ denotes the path connecting $x$ to $y_x$ in $T$ but not containing $y_x$. The resulting subtree of $T$ is called the {\it reducible stem } of $T$. In this paper, we first use a new technique of Gould a…
The leafage of a digraph is the minimum number of leaves in a host tree in which it has a subtree intersection representation. We discuss bounds on the leafage in terms of other parameters (including Ferrers dimension), obtaining a string of sharp inequalities.
In this paper, we provide algorithms to rank and unrank certain degree-restricted classes of Cayley trees (spanning trees of the n-vertex complete graph). Specifically, we consider classes of trees that have a given set of leaves or a fixed number k of leaves. For fixed k, the number of Cayley trees with n vertices and k leaves grows roughly as n! and hence the ranks have O(nlog_2(n)) bits. Our ranking and unranking algorithms require at most O(n^2) comparisons of numbers less than or equal to n plus O(n) operations of multiplication, division, addition, substraction and comparision on numbers…
A leaf of a plane tree is called an old leaf if it is the leftmost child of its parent, and it is called a young leaf otherwise. In this paper we enumerate plane trees with a given number of old leaves and young leaves. The formula is obtained combinatorially by presenting two bijections between plane trees and 2-Motzkin paths which map young leaves to red horizontal steps, and old leaves to up steps plus one. We derive some implications to the enumeration of restricted permutations with respect to certain statistics such as pairs of consecutive deficiencies, double descents, and ascending run…
We prove that there exists $C>0$ such that any $(n+Ck)$-vertex tournament contains a copy of every $n$-vertex oriented tree with $k$ leaves, improving the previously best known bound of $n+O(k^2)$ vertices to give a result tight up to the value of $C$. Furthermore, we show that, for each $k$, there exists $n_0$, such that, whenever $n\geqslant n_0$, any $(n+k-2)$-vertex tournament contains a copy of every $n$-vertex oriented tree with at most $k$ leaves, confirming a conjecture of Dross and Havet.
For any graph $G$ of order $n$, the spanning tree packing number \emph{$STP(G)$}, is the maximum number of edge-disjoint spanning trees contained in $G$. In this paper, we obtain some sharp lower bounds for the spanning tree numbers of Cartesian product graphs and Lexicographic product graphs.
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.
The main purpose of the paper is to develop an approach to evaluation or estimation of the spanning tree congestion of planar graphs. This approach is used to evaluate the spanning tree congestion of triangular grids.
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 tree is called k-ended tree if it has at most k leaves, where a leaf is a vertex of degree one. In this paper we prove that every 3-regular connected graph with n vertices such that n is greater than 8 has spanning sub tree with at most [(2n+4)/9]-ended tree. At the end we give a conjecture about spanning k-ended trees on 3-regular connected graphs.
We provide a structural description of, and invariants for, maximum spanning tree-packable graphs, i.e. those graphs G for which the edge connectivity of G is equal to the maximum number of edge-disjoint spanning trees in G. These graphs are of interest for the k-tree protocol of Itai and Rodeh [Inform. and Comput. 79 (1988), 43-59].
Let T1, T2,.... Tk be spanning trees in a graph G. If for any pair of vertices u and v of G, the paths between u and v in every Ti( 0 < i < k+1) do not contain common edges then T1, T2,.... Tk are called edge-disjoint spanning trees in G. The design of multiple edge-disjoint spanning trees has applications to the reliable communication protocols. The n-dimensional augmented cube, denoted as AQn, a variation of the hypercube, possesses some properties superior to those of the hypercube. For AQn (n > 2), construction of n-1 edge-disjoint spanning trees is given the result is optimal with respect…
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…
This note derives the characteristic polynomial of a graph that represents nonjump moves in a generalized game of checkers. The number of spanning trees is also determined.
A spanning tree without a vertex of degree two is called a Hist which is an abbreviation for homeomorphically irreducible spanning tree. We provide a necessary condition for the existence of a Hist in a cubic graph. As one consequence, we answer affirmatively an open question on Hists by Albertson, Berman, Hutchinson and Thomassen.
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.
In the present paper we consider the problem of constructing all the projective rooted spanning trees of a given graph. We propose an algorithm based on reducing this problem to the problem of constructing all the maximal independent sets of a certain derived graph. We also offer an algorithm for step-by-step growing the spanning trees that sifts, at each step, any sub-trees non-extendable to projective spanning trees. The proposed algorithms were applied for analyzing the possible variants of the syntactic subordination of nouns through prepositions .
A tree with at most $k$ leaves is called a $k$-ended tree. A spanning 2-ended tree is a Hamilton path. A Hamilton cycle can be considered as a spanning 1-ended tree. The earliest result concerning spanning trees with few leaves states that if $k$ is a positive integer and $G$ is a connected graph of order $n$ with $d(x)+d(y)\ge n-k+1$ for each pair of nonadjacent vertices $x,y$, then $G$ has a spanning $k$-ended tree. In this paper, we improve this result in two ways, and an analogous result is proved for dominating $k$-ended trees based on the generalized parameter $t_k$ - the order of a larg…
We consider the number of spanning trees in circulant graphs of $βn$ vertices with generators depending linearly on $n$. The matrix tree theorem gives a closed formula of $βn$ factors, while we derive a formula of $β-1$ factors. Using the same trick, we also derive a formula for the number of spanning trees in discrete tori. Moreover, the spanning tree entropy of circulant graphs with fixed and non-fixed generators is compared.
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.
We prove a refinement of the tree packing theorem by Tutte/Nash-Williams for finite graphs. This result is used to obtain a similar result for end faithful spanning tree packings in certain infinite graphs and consequently to establish a sufficient Hamiltonicity condition for the line graphs of such graphs.
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.
In this short note, we study pairwise edge-disjoint rainbow spanning trees in properly edge-coloured complete graphs, where a graph is rainbow if its edges have distinct colours. Brualdi and Hollingsworth conjectured that every $K_n$ properly edge-coloured by $n-1$ colours has $n/2$ edge-disjoint rainbow spanning trees. Kaneko, Kano and Suzuki later suggested this should hold for every properly edge-coloured $K_n$. Improving the previous best known bound, we show that every properly edge-coloured $K_n$ contains $Ω(n)$ pairwise edge-disjoint rainbow spanning trees. Independently, Pokrovskiy and…
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…
The Ferrers bound conjecture is a natural graph-theoretic extension of the enumeration of spanning trees for Ferrers graphs. We document the current status of the conjecture and provide a further conjecture which implies it.
Let T1, T2,..., Tk be spanning trees in a graph G. If for any pair of vertices {u, v} of G, the paths between u and v in every Ti( 0 < i < k+1) do not contain common edges and common vertices, except the vertices u and v, then T1, T2,..., Tk are called completely independent spanning trees in G. The n-dimensional augmented cube, denoted as AQn, a variation of the hypercube possesses several embeddable properties that the hypercube and its variations do not possess. For AQn (n > 5), construction of 4 completely independent spanning trees of which two trees with diameters 2n - 5 and two trees wi…
We give a Cayley type formula to count the number of spanning trees in the complete r-uniform hypergraph for all r >= 3. Similar to the bijection between spanning trees in complete graphs and Parking functions, we derive a bijection from spanning trees of the complete (r+1)-uniform hypergraph which arise from a fixed r-perfect matching and r-Parking functions. We observe a simple consequence of this bijection in terms of the number of regions of the extended Shi arrangement.
We prove, that every connected graph with $s$ vertices of degree 3 and $t$ vertices of degree at least~4 has a spanning tree with at least ${2\over 5}t +{1\over 5}s+α$ leaves, where $α\ge {8\over 5}$. Moreover, $α\ge 2$ for all graphs besides three exclusions. All exclusion are regular graphs of degree~4, they are explicitly described in the paper. We present infinite series of graphs, containing only vertices of degrees~3 and~4, for which the maximal number of leaves in a spanning tree is equal for ${2\over 5}t +{1\over 5}s+2$. Therefore we prove that our bound is tight.
We prove a Matrix-Tree Theorem enumerating the spanning trees of a cell complex in terms of the eigenvalues of its cellular Laplacian operators, generalizing a previous result for simplicial complexes. As an application, we obtain explicit formulas for spanning tree enumerators and Laplacian eigenvalues of cubes; the latter are integers. We prove a weighted version of the eigenvalue formula, providing evidence for a conjecture on weighted enumeration of cubical spanning trees. We introduce a cubical analogue of shiftedness, and obtain a recursive formula for the Laplacian eigenvalues of shifte…
