Spanning Trees with Few Peripheral Branch Vertices

Abstract

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 $T$. The set of leaves of $T$ is denoted by $L(T)$ and the set of branch vertices of $T$ is denoted by $B(T)$. For two distinct vertices $u$, $v$ of $T$, let $P_T[u,v]$ denote the unique path in $T$ connecting $u$ and $v$. Let $T$ be a tree with $B(T) \neq \emptyset$, for each vertex $x \in L(T)$, set $y_x \in B(T)$ such that $(V(P_T[x,y_x]) \setminus \{y_x\}) \cap B(T) = \emptyset$. We delete $V(P_T[x,y_x]) \setminus \{y_x\}$ from $T$ for all $x \in L(T)$. The resulting graph is a subtree of $T$ and is denoted by $\operatorname{R\_Stem}(T)$. It is called the reducible stem of $T$. A leaf of $\operatorname{R\_Stem}(T)$ is called a peripheral branch vertex of $T$. In this paper, we give some sharp sufficient conditions on the independence number and the degree sum for a graph $G$ to have a spanning tree with few peripheral branch vertices.