The Diameter of the Minimum Spanning Tree of a Complete Graph

Abstract

Let $X_1,\ldots,X_{n\choose 2}$ be independent identically distributed weights for the edges of $K_n$. If $X_i \neq X_j$ for$ i \neq j$, then there exists a unique minimum weight spanning tree $T$ of $K_n$ with these edge weights. We show that the expected diameter of $T$ is $Θ (n^{1/3})$. This settles a question of [Frieze97].

Keywords

• minimum spanning trees
• random graphs
• kruskal's algorithm
• branching processes
• ballot theorem
• [info.info-ds] computer science [cs]/data structures and algorithms [cs.ds]
• [info.info-dm] computer science [cs]/discrete mathematics [cs.dm]
• [math.math-co] mathematics [math]/combinatorics [math.co]