Finding a HIST: Chordality, Structural Parameters, and Diameter

Abstract: A homeomorphically irreducible spanning tree (HIST) is a spanning tree with no degree-2 vertices, serving as a structurally minimal backbone of a graph. While the existence of HISTs has been widely studied from a structural perspective, the algorithmic complexity of finding them remains less understood. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive investigation of the HIST problem from both structural and algorithmic viewpoints. We present a simple characterization that precisely describes which chordal graphs of diameter at most~3 admit a HIST, leading to a polynomial-time decision procedure for this class. In contrast, we show that the problem is NP-complete for strongly chordal graphs of diameter~4. From the perspective of parameterized complexity, we establish that the HIST problem is W[1]-hard when parameterized by clique-width, indicating that the problem is unlikely to be efficiently solvable in general dense graphs. On the other hand, we present fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) algorithms when parameterized by treewidth, modular-width, or cluster vertex deletion number. Specifically, we develop an $O^*(4^{k})$-time algorithm parameterized by modular-width~$k$, and an FPT algorithm parameterized by the cluster vertex deletion number based on kernelization techniques that bound clique sizes while preserving the existence of a HIST. These results together provide a clearer understanding of the structural and computational boundaries of the HIST problem.