Minimum degree condition for spanning generalized Halin graphs

TL;DR

This paper establishes a minimum degree threshold for large, 3-connected graphs to contain spanning generalized Halin graphs, extending understanding of graph structures related to HISTs and Halin graphs.

Contribution

It proves a tight minimum degree condition ensuring large 3-connected graphs contain spanning generalized Halin graphs, bridging gaps between HISTs and Halin graphs.

Findings

Any 3-connected graph with minimum degree at least (2n+3)/5 contains a spanning generalized Halin graph.

The minimum degree condition is proven to be best possible.

The result implies the existence of a large wheel-minor in such graphs.

Abstract

A spanning tree with no vertices of degree 2 is called a Homeomorphically irreducible spanning tree\,(HIST). Based on a HIST embedded in the plane, a Halin graph is formed by connecting the leaves of the tree into a cycle following the cyclic order determined by the embedding. Both of the determination problems of whether a graph contains a HIST or whether a graph contains a spanning Halin graph are shown to be NP-complete. It was conjectured by Albertson, Berman, Hutchinson, and Thomassen in 1990 that a {\it every surface triangulation of at least four vertices contains a HIST}\,(confirmed). And it was conjectured by Lov\'asz and Plummer that {\it every 4-connected plane triangulation contains a spanning Halin graph}\,(disproved). Balancing the above two facts, in this paper, we consider generalized Halin graphs, a family of graph structures which are "stronger" than HISTs but "weaker" than Halin graphs in the sense of their construction constraints. To be exact, a generalized Halin graph is formed from a HIST by connecting its leaves into a cycle. Since a generalized Halin graph needs not to be planar, we investigate the minimum degree condition for a graph to contain it as a spanning subgraph. We show that there exists a positive integer $n_0$ such that any 3-connected graph with $n\ge n_0$ vertices and minimum degree at least $(2n+3)/5$ contains a spanning generalized Halin graph. As an application, the result implies that under the same condition, the graph $G$ contains a wheel-minor of order at least $n/2$. The minimum degree condition in the result is best possible.