English

A note on naturally embedded ternary trees

Combinatorics 2009-03-09 v2

Abstract

In this note we consider ternary trees naturally embedded in the plane in a deterministic way such that the root has position zero, or in other words label zero, and the children of a node with position jj have positions j1j-1, jj, and j+1j+1, for all jZj\in\Z. We derive the generating function of ternary trees where all nodes have labels which are less or equal than jj, with jNj\in\N, and the generating function of ternary trees counted with respect to nodes with label jj, with jZj\in\Z. Moreover, we discuss generalizations of the counting problem to several labels at the same time. Furthermore, we use generating functions to study the depths of the external node ss, or in other words leaf ss with 0s2n0\le s\le 2n, where the 2n+12n+1 external nodes of a ternary tree are numbered from the left to the right according to an inorder traveral. The three different types depths -- left, right and center -- are due to the embedding of the ternary tree in the plane. Finally, we discuss generalizations of the considered enumeration problems to embedded dd-ary trees.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0902.2646,
  title  = {A note on naturally embedded ternary trees},
  author = {Markus Kuba},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0902.2646},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

15 pages, 5 figures; Version 2: typos corrected, simplified formula for series $X$ added

R2 v1 2026-06-21T12:11:56.893Z