A spanning tree with at most \(k\) leaves in a \(K_{1,p}\)-free graph (Q6117248)

Summary: For an integer \(k \geqslant 2\), a tree is called a \(k\)-ended tree if it has at most \(k\) leaves. It was shown that some \(\sigma_{k+1}(G)\) conditions assure the existence of a spanning \(k\)-ended tree in a connected \(K_{1, p}\)-free graph \(G\) for the pairs \((p,k)\) with \(p \leq 4\), or \(p= 5\) and \(k=4,6\), where \(\sigma_{k+1}(G)\) is the minimum degree sum of pairwise non-adjacent \(k+1\) vertices of \(G\). In this paper, we extend those results to the case with any integer \(p \geq 3\) by proving that for any \(k \geqslant 2\) and \(p \geqslant 3\), there exists a constant \(f(p,k)\) depending only on \(k\) and \(p\) such that if a connected \(K_{1, p}\)-free graph satisfies \(\sigma_{k+1}(G) \geqslant |G|+ f(p,k)\), then \(G\) has a spanning \(k\)-ended tree. The coefficient \(1\) of \(|G|\) in the \(\sigma_{k+1}(G)\) condition is best possible.