On avoidable and unavoidable trees

A directed tree is a rooted tree if there is one vertex (the root) of in-degree 0 and every other vertex has in-degree 1. The depth of a rooted tree is the length of a longest path from the root. A directed graph G is called n-unavoidable if every tournament of order n contains it as a subgraph. M. Saks and V. Sós [“On Unavoidable Subgraphs of Tournaments,” Colloquia Mathematica Societatis Janos Bolyai 37, Finite and Infinite Sets, Eger, Hungary (1981), 663–674] constructed unavoidable rooted spanning trees of depth 3. There they wrote, “It is natural to ask how small the depth of a spanning n-unavoidable rooted tree can be.” In this paper we construct unavoidable rooted spanning trees of depth 2. Note that the depth 2 is the best we can do. For each n define λ(n) to be the largest real number such that every claw with degree d ≤ λ(n)n is n-unavoidable. The example in X. Lu [“On Claws Belonging to Every Tournament,” Combinatorica, Vol. 11 (1991), pp. 173–179] showed that λ(n) < 1/2 for sufficiently large n, but the upper bound on λ(n) given there tends to 1/2 for large n. Let λ be the lim sup of λ(n) as n tends to infinity. In this paper we show that λ is strictly less than 1/2, specifically λ ≤ 25/52. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Median orders of tournaments: A tool for the second neighborhood problem and Sumner's conjecture

We give a short constructive proof of a theorem of Fisher: every tournament contains a vertex whose second outneighborhood is as large as its first outneighborhood. Moreover, we exhibit two such vertices provided that the tournament has no dominated vertex. The proof makes use of median orders. A second application of median orders is that every tournament of order 2n − 2 contains every arborescence of order n > 1. This is a particular case of Sumner's conjecture: every tournament of order 2n − 2 contains every oriented tree of order n > 1. Using our method, we prove that every tournament of order (7n − 5)/2 contains every oriented tree of order n. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Graph Theory 35: 244–256, 2000     

The Number of Out-Pancyclic Vertices in a Strong Tournament

An arc in a tournament T with n ≥ 3 vertices is called pancyclic, if it belongs to a cycle of length l for all 3 ≤ l ≤ n. We call a vertex u of T an out-pancyclic vertex of T, if each out-arc of u is pancyclic in T. Yao et al. (Discrete Appl. Math. 99, 245–249, 2000) proved that every strong tournament contains an out-pancyclic vertex. For strong tournaments with minimum out-degree 1, Yao et al. found an infinite class of strong tournaments, each of which contains exactly one out-pancyclic vertex. In this paper, we prove that every strong tournament with minimum out-degree at least 2 contains three out-pancyclic vertices. Our result is best possible since there is an infinite family of strong tournaments with minimum degree at least 2 and no more than 3 out-pancyclic vertices.     

Out-arc pancyclicity of vertices in tournaments

Yao, Guo and Zhang [T. Yao, Y. Guo, K. Zhang, Pancyclic out-arcs of a vertex in a tournament, Discrete Appl. Math. 99 (2000) 245-249.] proved that every strong tournament contains a vertex u such that every out-arc of u is pancyclic. In this paper, we prove that every strong tournament with minimum out-degree at least two contains two such vertices. Yeo [A. Yeo, The number of pancyclic arcs in a k-strong tournament, J. Graph Theory 50 (2005) 212-219.] conjectured that every 2-strong tournament has three distinct vertices {x,y,z}, such that every arc out of x,y and z is pancyclic. In this paper, we also prove that Yeo’s conjecture is true.     

On k‐ary spanning trees of tournaments

It is well known that every tournament contains a Hamiltonian path, which can be restated as that every tournament contains a unary spanning tree. The purpose of this article is to study the general problem of whether a tournament contains a k‐ary spanning tree. In particular, we prove that, for any fixed positive integer k, there exists a minimum number h(k) such that every tournament of order at least h(k) contains a k‐ary spanning tree. The existence of a Hamiltonian path for any tournament is the same as h(1) = 1. We then show that h(2) = 4 and h(3) = 8. The values of h(k) remain unknown for k ≥ 4. © 1999 John & Sons, Inc. J Graph Theory 30: 167–176, 1999     

On extremal sizes of locally k-tree graphs

A graph G is a locally k-tree graph if for any vertex v the subgraph induced by the neighbours of v is a k-tree, k ⩾ 0, where 0-tree is an edgeless graph, 1-tree is a tree. We characterize the minimum-size locally k-trees with n vertices. The minimum-size connected locally k-trees are simply (k + 1)-trees. For k ⩾ 1, we construct locally k-trees which are maximal with respect to the spanning subgraph relation. Consequently, the number of edges in an n-vertex locally k-tree graph is between Ω(n) and O(n ²), where both bounds are asymptotically tight. In contrast, the number of edges in an n-vertex k-tree is always linear in n.     

Score certificates for tournaments

The score of a vertex in a tournament is its out-degree. A score certificate for a labeled tournament T is a labeled subdigraph D of T which together with the score sequence of T allows errorless reconstruction of T. In this paper we prove a general lower bound on the sizes of score certificates. Our main theorem can be stated as follows: Except for the regular tournaments on 3 and 5 vertices, every tournament T on n vertices requires at least n−1 arcs in a score certificate for T. This is best possible since every transitive tournament on n vertices has a score certificate with exactly n−1 arcs. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The structure of 4‐strong tournaments containing exactly three out‐arc pancyclic vertices

Yao et al. (Discrete Appl Math 99 (2000), 245–249) proved that every strong tournament contains a vertex u such that every out‐arc of u is pancyclic and conjectured that every k‐strong tournament contains k such vertices. At present, it is known that this conjecture is true for k = 1, 2, 3 and not true for k?4. In this article, we obtain a sufficient and necessary condition for a 4‐strong tournament to contain exactly three out‐arc pancyclic vertices, which shows that a 4‐strong tournament contains at least four out‐arc pancyclic vertices except for a given class of tournaments. Furthermore, our proof yields a polynomial algorithm to decide if a 4‐strong tournament has exactly three out‐arc pancyclic vertices.     

Characterization of partial 3-trees in terms of three structures

A characterization of partial 3-trees is given based on the elimination sequence of vertices. It is proved that a partial 3-tree contains a vertex set satisfying either of certain three kinds of neighborhood relations on vertices and that a graph is a partial 3-tree if and only if eliminating such a vertex set results in a partial 3-tree. These results yield anO(n ²) time algorithm to recognize 3-trees.     

Spanning Trees with a Bounded Number of Branch Vertices in a Claw-Free Graph

Let k be a non-negative integer. A branch vertex of a tree is a vertex of degree at least three. We show two sufficient conditions for a connected claw-free graph to have a spanning tree with a bounded number of branch vertices: (i) A connected claw-free graph has a spanning tree with at most k branch vertices if its independence number is at most 2k + 2. (ii) A connected claw-free graph of order n has a spanning tree with at most one branch vertex if the degree sum of any five independent vertices is at least n ? 2. These conditions are best possible. A related conjecture also is proposed.     

On claws belonging to every tournament

A directed graph is said to ben-unavoidable if it is contained as a subgraph by every tournament onn vertices. A number of theorems have been proven showing that certain graphs aren-unavoidable, the first being Rédei's results that every tournament has a Hamiltonian path. M. Saks and V. Sós gave more examples in [6] and also a conjecture that states: Every directed claw onn vertices such that the outdegree of the root is at most [n/2] isn-unavoidable. Here a claw is a rooted tree obtained by identifying the roots of a set of directed paths. We give a counterexample to this conjecture and prove the following result:any claw of rootdegreen/4 is n-unavoidable.     

An approximate version of Sumner?s universal tournament conjecture

Sumner?s universal tournament conjecture states that any tournament on 2n−2 vertices contains a copy of any directed tree on n vertices. We prove an asymptotic version of this conjecture, namely that any tournament on (2+o(1))n vertices contains a copy of any directed tree on n vertices. In addition, we prove an asymptotically best possible result for trees of bounded degree, namely that for any fixed Δ, any tournament on (1+o(1))n vertices contains a copy of any directed tree on n vertices with maximum degree at most Δ.     

Vertex pancyclic in‐tournaments

An in‐tournament is an oriented graph such that the negative neighborhood of every vertex induces a tournament. The topic of this paper is to investigate vertex k‐pancyclicity of in‐tournaments of order n, where for some 3 ≤ k ≤ n, every vertex belongs to a cycle of length p for every k ≤ p ≤ n. We give sharp lower bounds for the minimum degree such that a strong in‐tournament is vertex k‐pancyclic for k ≤ 5 and k ≥ n − 3. In the latter case, we even show that the in‐tournaments in consideration are fully (n − 3)‐extendable which means that every vertex belongs to a cycle of length n − 3 and that the vertex set of every cycle of length at least n − 3 is contained in a cycle of length one greater. In accordance with these results, we state the conjecture that every strong in‐tournament of order n with minimum degree greater than is vertex k‐pancyclic for 5 < k < n − 3, and we present a family of examples showing that this bound would be best possible. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Graph Theory 36: 84–104, 2001     

Decomposing <Emphasis Type="Italic">k</Emphasis>-ARc-Strong Tournaments Into Strong Spanning Subdigraphs

  The so-called Kelly conjecture states that every regular tournament on 2k+1 vertices has a decomposition into k-arc-disjoint hamiltonian cycles. In this paper we formulate a generalization of that conjecture, namely we conjecture that every k-arc-strong tournament contains k arc-disjoint spanning strong subdigraphs. We prove several results which support the conjecture:If D = (V, A) is a 2-arc-strong semicomplete digraph then it contains 2 arc-disjoint spanning strong subdigraphs except for one digraph on 4 vertices.Every tournament which has a non-trivial cut (both sides containing at least 2 vertices) with precisely k arcs in one direction contains k arc-disjoint spanning strong subdigraphs. In fact this result holds even for semicomplete digraphs with one exception on 4 vertices.Every k-arc-strong tournament with minimum in- and out-degree at least 37k contains k arc-disjoint spanning subdigraphs H ₁, H ₂, . . . , H _k such that each H _i is strongly connected.The last result implies that if T is a 74k-arc-strong tournament with speci.ed not necessarily distinct vertices u ₁, u ₂, . . . , u _k , v ₁, v ₂, . . . , v _k then T contains 2k arc-disjoint branchings where is an in-branching rooted at the vertex u _i and is an out-branching rooted at the vertex v _i , i=1,2, . . . , k. This solves a conjecture of Bang-Jensen and Gutin [3].We also discuss related problems and conjectures.

Spanning k-Trees of n-Connected Graphs

A tree is called a k-tree if the maximum degree is at most k. We prove the following theorem, by which a closure concept for spanning k-trees of n-connected graphs can be defined. Let k ≥ 2 and n ≥ 1 be integers, and let u and v be a pair of nonadjacent vertices of an n-connected graph G such that deg _G (u) + deg _G (v) ≥ |G| − 1 − (k − 2)n, where |G| denotes the order of G. Then G has a spanning k-tree if and only if G + uv has a spanning k-tree.     

Claws in Rotational Tournaments

 A claw is a rooted tree whose each branch is a directed path starting at the root. We prove that each rotational tournament on 2n+1 vertices contains all claws with 2n edges and at most n branches. Received: December 15, 1999 Final version received: April 18, 2001 Acknowledgements. The authors wish to express their gratitude to the referee for valuable remarks, suggestions and comments that led to an improved paper.     

Chromaticity of two-trees

The graphs called 2-trees are defined by recursion. The smallest 2-tree is the complete graph on 2 vertices. A 2-tree on n + 1 vertices (where n ≥ 2) is obtained by adding a new vertex adjacent to each of 2 arbitrarily selected adjacent vertices in a 2-tree on n vertices. A graph G is a 2-tree on n(≥2) vertices if and only if its chromatic polynomial is equal to γ(γ - 1)(γ - 2)^n—2.     

Unavoidable trees in tournaments

An oriented tree T on n vertices is unavoidable if every tournament on n vertices contains a copy of T. In this paper, we give a sufficient condition for T to be unavoidable, and use this to prove that almost all labeled oriented trees are unavoidable, verifying a conjecture of Bender and Wormald. We additionally prove that every tournament on vertices contains a copy of every oriented tree T on n vertices with polylogarithmic maximum degree, improving a result of Kühn, Mycroft, and Osthus.     

Bounds on the convex label number of trees

A convex labelling of a tree is an assignment of distinct non-negative integer labels to vertices such that wheneverx, y andz are the labels of vertices on a path of length 2 theny≦(x+z)/2. In addition if the tree is rooted, a convex labelling must assign 0 to the root. The convex label number of a treeT is the smallest integerm such thatT has a convex labelling with no label greater thanm. We prove that every rooted tree (and hence every tree) withn vertices has convex label number less than 4n. We also exhibitn-vertex trees with convex label number 4n/3+o(n), andn-vertex rooted trees with convex label number 2n +o(n). The research by M. B. and A. W. was partly supported by NSF grant MCS—8311422.     

Branches in scale-free trees

In the paper the scale-free (preferential attachment) model of a random recursive tree is considered. We deal with the size and the distribution of vertex degrees in the kth branch of such a tree (which is the subtree rooted at vertex labeled k). A comparison of these results with analogous results for the whole tree shows that the k-branch of a scale-free tree can be considered as a scale-free tree itself with the number of vertices being random variables.