Abstract

A n-vertex graph is said to be decomposable if for any partition (λ₁,…,λ_p) of the integer n, there exists a sequence (V₁,…,V_p) of connected vertex-disjoint subgraphs with |V_i|=λ_i. In this paper, we focus on decomposable trees. We show that a decomposable tree has degree at most 4. Moreover, each degree-4 vertex of a decomposable tree is adjacent to a leaf. This leads to a polynomial time algorithm to decide if a multipode (a tree with only one vertex of degree greater than 2) is decomposable. We also exhibit two families of decomposable trees: arbitrary large trees with one vertex of degree 4, and trees with an arbitrary number of degree-3 vertices.

Keywords: Tree decomposition; Integer partition; Computational complexity

Article Outline

1. Introduction

2. Degree of decomposable trees

3. Some families of decomposable trees

4. A polynomial time algorithm for multipodes

5. Decomposition following a given partition

6. Questions

References