A graph $G$ is a $k$-tree if either $G$ is the complete graph on $k+1$ vertices, or $G$ has a vertex $v$ whose neighborhood is a clique of order $k$ and the graph obtained by removing $v$ from $G$ is also a $k$-tree. Clearly, a $k$-tree has at least $k+1$ vertices, and $G$ is a 1-tree (usual tree) if and only if it is a $1$-connected graph and has no $K_3$-minor. In this paper, motivated by some properties of 2-trees, we obtain a characterization of $k$-trees as follows: if $G$ is a graph with at least $k+1$ vertices, then $G$ is...

For a connected graph $G=(V,E)$ and a set $S\subseteq V\left(G\right)$ with at least two vertices, an $S$-Steiner tree is a subgraph $T=(V^{\text{'}},E^{\text{'}})$ of $G$ that is a tree with $S\subseteq V^{\text{'}}$. If the degree of each vertex of $S$ in $T$ is equal to 1, then $T$ is called a pendant $S$-Steiner tree. Two $S$-Steiner trees are if they share no vertices other than $S$ and have no edges in common. For $S\subseteq V\left(G\right)$ and $\left|S\right|\ge 2$, the pendant tree-connectivity ${\tau }_G\left(S\right)$ is the maximum number of internally disjoint pendant $S$-Steiner trees in $G$, and for $k\ge 2$, the $k$-pendant tree-connectivity ${\tau }_k\left(G\right)$ is the...

Let $L(n,d)$ denote the minimum possible number of leaves in a tree of order $n$ and diameter $d.$ Lesniak (1975) gave the lower bound $B(n,d)=\lceil 2(n-1)/d\rceil$ for $L(n,d).$ When $d$ is even, $B(n,d)=L(n,d).$ But when $d$ is odd, $B(n,d)$ is smaller than $L(n,d)$ in general. For example, $B(21,3)=14$ while $L(21,3)=19.$ In this note, we determine $L(n,d)$ using new ideas. We also consider the converse problem and determine the minimum possible diameter of a tree with given order and number of leaves.

Let $T$ be a tree. Then a vertex of $T$ with degree one is a leaf of $T$ and a vertex of degree at least three is a branch vertex of $T$. The set of leaves of $T$ is denoted by $L\left(T\right)$ and the set of branch vertices of $T$ is denoted by $B\left(T\right)$. For two distinct vertices $u$, $v$ of $T$, let $P_T[u,v]$ denote the unique path in $T$ connecting $u$ and $v.$ Let $T$ be a tree with $B\left(T\right)\ne \varnothing$. For each leaf $x$ of $T$, let $y_x$ denote the nearest branch vertex to $x$. We delete $V\left(P_T[x,y_x]\right)\setminus \left\{y_x\right\}$ from $T$ for all $x\in L\left(T\right)$. The resulting subtree of $T$ is called the reducible stem...

Let G be a graph of order n and size m. A γ-labeling of G is a one-to-one function f:V(G) → 0,1,2,...,m that induces a labeling f’: E(G) → 1,2,...,m of the edges of G defined by f’(e) = |f(u)-f(v)| for each edge e = uv of G. The value of a γ-labeling f is $val\left(f\right)={\Sigma }_{e\in E\left(G\right)}{f}^{\text{'}}K\left(e\right)$. The maximum value of a γ-labeling of G is defined as $va{l}_{max}\left(G\right)=maxval\left(f\right):fisa\gamma -labelingofG$; while the minimum value of a γ-labeling of G is $va{l}_{min}\left(G\right)=minval\left(f\right):fisa\gamma -labelingofG$; The values $va{l}_{max}\left(S_{p,q}\right)$ and $va{l}_{min}\left(S_{p,q}\right)$ are determined for double stars $S_{p,q}$. We present characterizations of connected graphs G of order n for which...

A proper coloring $c:V\left(G\right)\to \{1,2,...,k\}$, $k\ge 2$ of a graph $G$ is called a graceful $k$-coloring if the induced edge coloring $c^{\text{'}}:E\left(G\right)\to \{1,2,...,k-1\}$ defined by $c^{\text{'}}\left(uv\right)=|c\left(u\right)-c\left(v\right)|$ for each edge $uv$ of $G$ is also proper. The minimum integer $k$ for which $G$ has a graceful $k$-coloring is the graceful chromatic number ${\chi }_g\left(G\right)$. It is known that if $T$ is a tree with maximum degree $\Delta$, then ${\chi }_g\left(T\right)\le \lceil \frac{5}{3}\Delta \rceil$ and this bound is best possible. It is shown for each integer $\Delta \ge 2$ that there is an infinite class of trees $T$ with maximum degree $\Delta$ such that ${\chi }_g\left(T\right)=\lceil \frac{5}{3}\Delta \rceil$. In particular, we investigate for each...

Let $T_1,\cdots ,T_d$ be homogeneous trees with degrees $q_1+1,\cdots ,q_d+1\ge 3$, respectively. For each tree, let $𝔥:T_j\to \mathbb{Z}$ be the Busemann function with respect to a fixed boundary point (end). Its level sets are the horocycles. The horocyclic product of $T_1,\cdots ,T_d$ is the graph $\mathrm{𝖣𝖫}(q_1,\cdots ,q_d)$ consisting of all $d$-tuples $x_1\cdots x_d\in T_1\times \cdots \times T_d$ with $𝔥\left(x_1\right)+\cdots +𝔥\left(x_d\right)=0$, equipped with a natural neighbourhood relation. In the present paper, we explore the geometric, algebraic, analytic and probabilistic properties of these graphs and their isometry groups. If $d=2$ and $q_1=q_2=q$ then we obtain a Cayley graph...

The generalized $k$-connectivity ${\kappa }_k\left(G\right)$ of a graph $G$ was introduced by Chartrand et al. in 1984. As a natural counterpart of this concept, Li et al. in 2011 introduced the concept of generalized $k$-edge-connectivity which is defined as ${\lambda }_k\left(G\right)=min\{\lambda \left(S\right):S\subseteq V\left(G\right)$ and $\left|S\right|=k\}$, where $\lambda \left(S\right)$ denotes the maximum number $\ell$ of pairwise edge-disjoint trees $T_1,T_2,...,T_{\ell }$ in $G$ such that $S\subseteq V\left(T_i\right)$ for $1\le i\le \ell$. In this paper we prove that for any two connected graphs $G$ and $H$ we have ${\lambda }_3(G\square H)\ge {\lambda }_3\left(G\right)+{\lambda }_3\left(H\right)$, where $G\square H$ is the Cartesian product of $G$ and $H$. Moreover, the bound is sharp. We also...

Let $T$ be a tree with $n$ vertices. To each edge of $T$ we assign a weight which is a positive definite matrix of some fixed order, say, $s$. Let $D_{ij}$ denote the sum of all the weights lying in the path connecting the vertices $i$ and $j$ of $T$. We now say that $D_{ij}$ is the distance between $i$ and $j$. Define $D:=\left[D_{ij}\right]$, where $D_{ii}$ is the $s\times s$ null matrix and for $i\ne j$, $D_{ij}$ is the distance between $i$ and $j$. Let $G$ be an arbitrary connected weighted graph with $n$ vertices, where each weight is a positive definite matrix of order...