Fine-Grained Complexity of Computing Degree-Constrained Spanning Trees

We investigate the computation of minimum-cost spanning trees satisfying prescribed vertex degree constraints: Given a graph $G$ and a constraint function $D$, we ask for a (minimum-cost) spanning tree $T$ such that for each vertex $v$, $T$ achieves a degree specified by $D(v)$. Specifically, we consider three kinds of constraint functions ordered by their generality -- $D$ may either assign each vertex to a list of admissible degrees, an upper bound on the degrees, or a specific degree. Using a combination of novel techniques and state-of-the-art machinery, we obtain an almost-complete overview of the fine-grained complexity of these problems taking into account the most classical graph parameters of the input graph $G$. In particular, we present SETH-tight upper and lower bounds for these problems when parameterized by the pathwidth and cutwidth, an ETH-tight algorithm parameterized by the cliquewidth, and a nearly SETH-tight algorithm parameterized by treewidth. In order to obtain our upper bound for clique-width, we develop a novel technique of double representation through ``requirement shifting''. Using this technique, we also obtain an ETH-tight single-exponential XP algorithm for the Exact Leaf Spanning Tree problem parameterized by clique-width, which settles the final remaining open case for clique-width from the classical Cut and Count of Cygan et al. [FOCS 2011, TALG 2022]. This shows the versatility of our technique and its potential applicability to other problems as well. Additionally, in order to establish our lower and upper bounds we introduce a number of tools which may be of independent interest, including lazy coloring and ``asymptotic'' SETH-based reductions for structural parameters.