English

k-Ary spanning trees contained in tournaments

Combinatorics 2020-04-27 v3

Abstract

A rooted tree is called a kk-ary tree, if all non-leaf vertices have exactly kk children, except possibly one non-leaf vertex has at most k1k-1 children. Denote by h(k)h(k) the minimum integer such that every tournament of order at least h(k)h(k) contains a kk-ary spanning tree. It is well-known that every tournament contains a Hamiltonian path, which implies that h(1)=1h(1)=1. Lu et al. [J. Graph Theory {\bf 30}(1999) 167--176] proved the existence of h(k)h(k), and showed that h(2)=4h(2)=4 and h(3)=8h(3)=8. The exact values of h(k)h(k) remain unknown for k4k\geq 4. A result of Erd\H{o}s on the domination number of tournaments implies h(k)=Ω(klogk)h(k)=\Omega(k\log k). In this paper, we prove that h(4)=10h(4)=10 and h(5)13h(5)\geq13.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1803.09880,
  title  = {k-Ary spanning trees contained in tournaments},
  author = {Jiangdong Ai and Hui Lei and Yongtang Shi and Shunyu Yao and Zan-bo Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1803.09880},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

11 pages, to appear in Discrete Applied Mathematics

R2 v1 2026-06-23T01:05:54.044Z