Graphs whose acyclic graphoidal covering number is one less than its maximum degree

An acyclic graphoidal cover of a graph G is a collection ψ of paths in G such that every path in ψ has at least two vertices, every vertex of G is an internal vertex of at most one path in ψ and every edge of G is in exactly one path in ψ. The minimum cardinality of an acyclic graphoidal cover of G is called the acyclic graphoidal covering number of G and is denoted by η_a. In this paper we characterize the class of graphs G for which η_a=Δ−1 where Δ is the maximum degree of a vertex in G.