K-tree

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The Goldner–Harary graph, an example of a planar 3-tree.

In graph theory, a k-tree is an undirected graph formed by starting with a (k + 1)-vertex complete graph and then repeatedly adding vertices in such a way that each added vertex v has exactly k neighbors U such that, together, the k + 1 vertices formed by v and U form a clique.[1][2]

Characterizations

The k-trees are exactly the maximal graphs with a treewidth of k ("maximal" means that no more edges can be added without increasing their treewidth).[2] They are also exactly the chordal graphs all of whose maximal cliques are the same size k + 1 and all of whose minimal clique separators are also all the same size k.[1]

Related graph classes

1-trees are the same as trees. 2-trees are maximal series–parallel graphs,[3] and include also the maximal outerplanar graphs. Planar 3-trees are also known as Apollonian networks.[4]

The graphs that have treewidth at most k are exactly the subgraphs of k-trees, and for this reason they are called partial k-trees.[2]

The graphs formed by the edges and vertices of k-dimensional stacked polytopes, polytopes formed by starting from a simplex and then repeatedly gluing simplices onto the faces of the polytope, are k-trees when k ≥ 3.[5] This gluing process mimics the construction of k-trees by adding vertices to a clique.[6] A k-tree is the graph of a stacked polytope if and only if no three (k + 1)-vertex cliques have k vertices in common.[7]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 Patil, H. P. (1986), "On the structure of k-trees", Journal of Combinatorics, Information and System Sciences 11 (2-4): 57–64 .
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 Nešetřil, Jaroslav; Ossona de Mendez, Patrice (2008), "Structural Properties of Sparse Graphs", Building Bridges: between Mathematics and Computer Science, Bolyai Society Mathematical Studies, 19, Springer-Verlag, p. 390, ISBN 978-3-540-85218-6, http://kam.mff.cuni.cz/~kamserie/serie/clanky/2008/s863.pdf .
  3. Hwang, Frank; Richards, Dana; Winter, Pawel (1992), The Steiner Tree Problem, Annals of Discrete Mathematics (North-Holland Mathematics Studies), 53, Elsevier, p. 177, ISBN 978-0-444-89098-6 .
  4. Distances in random Apollonian network structures , talk slides by Olivier Bodini, Alexis Darrasse, and Michèle Soria from a talk at FPSAC 2008, accessed 2011-03-06.
  5. Koch, Etan (1976), "Covering efficiency of trees and k-trees", Proceedings of the Seventh Southeastern Conference on Combinatorics, Graph Theory, and Computing (Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge, La., 1976), Utilitas Math., Winnipeg, Man., pp. 391–420. Congressus Numerantium, No. XVII . See in particular p. 420.
  6. Below, Alexander (February 2004), "The complexity of finding small triangulations of convex 3-polytopes", Journal of Algorithms 50 (2): 134–167, doi:10.1016/s0196-6774(03)00092-0 
  7. Kleinschmidt, Peter (1 December 1976), "Eine graphentheoretische Kennzeichnung der Stapelpolytope", Archiv der Mathematik 27 (1): 663–667, doi:10.1007/BF01224736