Central Forests in Trees

A new 2-parameter family of central structures in trees, called central forests, is introduced. Minieka's $m$-center problem and McMorris's and Reid's central-$k$-tree can be seen as special cases of central forests in trees. A central forest is defined as a forest $F$ of $m$ subtrees of a tree $T$, where each subtree has $k$ nodes, which minimizes the maximum distance between nodes not in $F$ and those in $F$. An $O(n(m+k))$ algorithm to construct such a central forest in trees is presented, where $n$ is the number of nodes in the tree. The algorithm either returns with a central forest, or with the largest $k$ for which a central forest of $m$ subtrees is possible. Some of the elementary properties of central forests are also studied.