Null Decomposition of Trees

Abstract

Let $T$ be a tree, we show that the null space of the adjacency matrix of $T$ has relevant information about the structure of $T$. We introduce the Null Decomposition of trees, and use it in order to get formulas for independence number and matching number of a tree. We also prove that the number of maximum matchings in a tree is related to the null decomposition.

23 pages, 6 figures