English

The vertex sets of subtrees of a tree

Combinatorics 2025-06-05 v1

Abstract

Let F\mathcal{F} be a set of subsets of a set WW. When is there a tree TT with vertex set WW such that each member of F\mathcal{F} is the set of vertices of a subtree of TT? It is necessary that F\mathcal{F} has the Helly property and the intersection graph of F\mathcal{F} is chordal. We will show that these two necessary conditions are together sufficient in the finite case, and more generally, they are sufficient if no element of WW belongs to infinitely many infinite sets in F\mathcal{F}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2506.03603,
  title  = {The vertex sets of subtrees of a tree},
  author = {Maria Chudnovsky and Tung Nguyen and Alex Scott and Paul Seymour},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.03603},
  year   = {2025}
}