The centroidal branches of a separable graph are edge reconstructible (Q1377714)

The edge reconstruction conjecture states that every graph with at least four edges is (up to isomorphism) uniquely determined by its edge-deleted subgraphs. While this conjecture is still open for separable graphs, the author proves that certain parts of a separable graph, called centroid and branches of the centroid, are reconstructible from its edge-deleted subgraphs. The centroid \(C\) of a separable graph \(G\) is a maximal nonseparable subgraph of \(G\) or a cutvertex of \(G\) with the property that, for each spanning tree \(T\) of \(G\), the vertices \(v\) for which the number of vertices in a largest component of \(T - v\) is minimal, belong to \(C\). The author proves that the centroid exists and is unique. A branch \(B\) of the centroid \(C\) is a maximal connected subgraph whose intersection with \(C\) is a single vertex \(c\) and in case \(C = \{c\}\), the vertex \(c\) is not a cutvertex in \(B\). It follows from the author's result that separable graphs with complete centroid are edge reconstructible, and that the branches of the centroid of any separable counterexample to the edge reconstruction conjecture must have a rather special property.