Edge separators for quasi-binary trees

Abstract

One wishes to remove $k-1$ edges of a vertex-weighted tree $T$ such that the weights of the $k$ induced connected components are approximately the same. How well can one do it ? In this paper, we investigate such $k$-separator for {\em quasi-binary} trees. We show that, under certain conditions on the total weight of the tree, a particular $k$-separator can be constructed such that the smallest (respectively the largest) weighted component is lower (respectively upper) bounded. Examples showing optimality for the lower bound are also given.