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arXiv · 2502.03741

On the characterization of graphs with tree 3-spanners

Lan Lin·Yixun Lin
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Abstract

The tree spanner problem for a graph $G$ is as follows: For a given integer $k$, is there a spanning tree $T$ of $G$ (called a tree $k$-spanner) such that the distance in $T$ between every pair of vertices is at most $k$ times their distance in $G$? The minimum $k$ that $G$ admits a tree $k$-spanner is denoted by $\sigma(G)$. It is well known in the literature that determining $\sigma(G)\leq 2$ is polynomially solvable, while determining $\sigma(G)\leq k$ for $k\geq 4$ is NP-complete. A long-standing open problem is to characterize graphs with $\sigma(G)=3$. This paper settles this open problem by proving that it is polynomially solvable.

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Lan Lin, Yixun Lin. 2025-02-06. On the characterization of graphs with tree 3-spanners. https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.03741

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