English

Odd spanning trees of a graph

Combinatorics 2025-03-25 v1

Abstract

A graph G=(V,E)G=(V,E) is said to be odd (or even, resp.) if dG(v)d_G(v) is odd (or even, resp.) for any vVv\in V. Trivially, the order of an odd graph must be even. In this paper, we show that every 4-edge connected graph of even order has a connected odd factor. A spanning tree TT of GG is called a homeomorphically irreducible spanning tree (HIST by simply) if TT contains no vertex of degree two. Trivially, an odd spanning tree must be a HIST. In 1990, Albertson, Berman, Hutchinson, and Thomassen showed that every connected graph of order nn with δ(G)min{n2,42n}\delta(G)\geq \min\{\frac n 2, 4\sqrt{2n}\} contains a HIST. We show that every complete bipartite graph with both parts being even has no odd spanning tree, thereby for any even integer nn divisible by 4, there exists a graph of order nn with the minimum degree n2\frac n 2 having no odd spanning tree. Furthermore, we show that every graph of order nn with δ(G)n2+1\delta(G)\geq \frac n 2 +1 has an odd spanning tree. We also characterize all split graphs having an odd spanning tree. As an application, for any graph GG with diameter at least 4, G\overline{G} has a spanning odd double star. Finally, we also give a necessary and sufficient condition for a triangle-free graph GG whose complement contains an odd spanning tree. A number of related open problems are proposed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2503.17676,
  title  = {Odd spanning trees of a graph},
  author = {Jingyu Zheng and Baoyindureng Wu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.17676},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

19 pages, 11 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T22:30:43.919Z