Distinct Fringe Subtrees in Random Trees

Abstract

A fringe subtree of a rooted tree is a subtree induced by one of the vertices and all its descendants. We consider the problem of estimating the number of distinct fringe subtrees in two types of random trees: simply generated trees and families of increasing trees (recursive trees, $d$-ary increasing trees and generalized plane-oriented recursive trees). We prove that the order of magnitude of the number of distinct fringe subtrees (under rather mild assumptions on what `distinct' means) in random trees with $n$ vertices is $n/\sqrt{\log n}$ for simply generated trees and $n/\log n$ for increasing trees.