Spanning Trees in 3-regular Graphs (2009)

Originators: Hoffman and Ostenhof    (presented by A. Kostochka - REGS 2009)

Background: We seek good spanning trees in graphs. For example, one may seek a large or a small number of leaves, small diameter, etc.

Conjecture: Every 3-regular graph G has a spanning tree T such that G-E(T) consists of isolated vertices, isolated edges, and cycles.

Comments: The cycles pass through the leaves of T; the point is that a leaf of T must not be adjacent to a vertex having degree 2 in T. Such trees exist for the Peterson graph, prisms over cycles, and many other graphs that have been tried.