Spectral radius and spanning trees of graphs (Q6041529)

A spanning \(k\)-ended-tree (\(k\geq 2\)) is a spanning tree with at most \(k\) pendant vertices. In the present paper, the authors provide tight (adjacency and signless Laplacian) spectral radius conditions for a connected graph of order \(n\) to have a spanning \(k\)-ended-tree, and characterize the extremal graphs. The leaf degree of a tree \(T\) is the maximum number of pendant vertices adjacent to \(v\) in \(T\) for any \(v \in V(T)\). The authors also give tight (adjacency and signless Laplacian) spectral radius conditions for the existence of a spanning tree with leaf degree at most \(k\) (\(k\geq 1\)) in a connected graph, and determine the extremal graphs. The proof of the two main theorems is based on ingenious applications of the degree sum condition of \textit{H. Broersma} and \textit{H. Tuinstra} [J. Graph Theory 29, No. 4, 227--237 (1998; Zbl 0919.05017)] and \textit{A. Kaneko}'s theorem [Discrete Appl. Math. 115, No. 1--3, 73--76 (2001; Zbl 0989.05023)], respectively.