Trees in Tournaments: A. El Sahili

Trees in tournaments
A. El Sahili
1. Sumner’s Conjecture
The digraphs considered here are orientations of simple graphs; they have no loops, multiple arcs or
2-circuits. A tournament is an orientation of a complete graph, an oriented tree an orientation of a tree. In
the early seventies, D. Sumner (see [8]) made the following conjecture:
Conjecture 1 Every oriented tree on n ≥ 2 vertices is contained in every tournament on 2n − 2 vertices.
Sumner’s conjecture was verified by Reid and Wormald [6] for near-regular tournaments, but the general
case of the conjecture remains open. It has been addressed in a sequence of papers, each one improving upon
the previously known bound. Wormald [8] showed that any tournament on n log2 (2n/e) vertices contains
any oriented tree on n vertices. The first linear bound, 12n, was given by Häggkvist and Thomason [2],
who also determined an asymptotic bound of (4 + o(1))n. Their method, based on the notion of the k-heart
of a tree, was then used by Havet [3] to reduce the bound to 7.6n. This bound, in turn, was improved by
Havet and Thomassé [4] to 4n − 6 and then, by a complicated technical argument, to (7n − 5)/2. Havet and
Thomassé also confirmed Sumner’s conjecture for branchings (trees oriented from a root or to a sink). They
established these results by making clever use of median orders. In this paper, we apply the same ideas to
give a short proof that any tournament on 3n − 3 vertices contains each oriented tree on n vertices.
2. Median Orders
Let D = (V, E) be a digraph, and v a vertex of D. The outneighbourhood of v is the set N + (v) := {x ∈
V |(v, x) ∈ E}. The outdegree of v, denoted by d+ (v), is the number of elements in N + (v). The dual notions
of in-neighbourhood and indegree are denoted by N − (v) and d− (v), respectively. A source is a vertex of
indegree zero, a sink a vertex of outdegree zero.
A median order of a digraph D = (V, E) is a linear order (v1 , v2 , . . . , vn ) of V which maximizes |{(vi , vj ) ∈
E : i < j}|. As noted by Havet and Thomassé [4], if M := (v1 , v2 , . . . , vn ) is a median order of D:
• every interval I := [vi+1 , vj ] of M is a median order of D[{vi+1 , vi+2 , . . . , vj }];

• for every interval I := [vi+1 , vj ] of M , |N + (vi ) ∩ I| ≥ |N − (vi ) ∩ I|.
Let A and D be digraphs, and let M := (v1 , v2 , . . . , vn ) be a median order of D. An embedding of A

in D is an injection f : V (A) → V (D) such that (f (vi ), f (vj )) ∈ E(D) whenever (vi , vj ) ∈ E(A). An
M -embedding of A in D is an embedding f of A in D such that, for every final section I := [vi+1 , vn ] of M ,
1
|f (A) ∩ I| < |I| + 1.
2
We shall make use of the following basic proposition, implicit in Havet and Thomassé [4].
Proposition 1 Let T be a tournament on at least three vertices, and let M := (v1 , v2 , . . . , vn ) be a median
order of T . Set T 0 := T [{v1 , v2 , . . . , vn−2 }] and M 0 := (v1 , v2 , . . . , vn−2 ). Let A be a digraph with a leaf
(x, y). Suppose that A0 := A − y has an M 0 -embedding f 0 in T 0 . Then A has an M -embedding f in T which
extends f 0 .
1
Proof Let f 0 be an M 0 -embedding of A0 in T 0 . Suppose that f 0 (x) = vi . Set I 0 := [vi+1 , vn−2 ]. Then
1 0
|f 0 (A0 ) ∩ I 0 | < |I | + 1.
2
Now set I := [vi+1 , vn ]. Because M is a median order of T and T is a tournament,
1 1
|NT+ (vi ) ∩ I| ≥ |I| = |I 0 | + 1.
2 2
Therefore
|NT+ (vi ) ∩ I| > |f 0 (A0 ) ∩ I 0 | = |f 0 (A0 ) ∩ I|.
In other words, vi has an outneighbour vj ∈ I \ f 0 (A0 ). We define f : V (A) → V (T ) by
f (v) := f 0 (v), v ∈ V (A0 ); f (y) := vj .
It is readily checked that f is an M -embedding of A in T .
A digraph A is m-embeddable if A has an M -embedding in T for every tournament T on m vertices and

every median order M of T . A rooted oriented tree is an oriented tree in which one vertex is specified as its
root. A branching (or arborescence) is a rooted oriented tree in which either every vertex has indegree one,
except for the root, which has indegree zero (an outbranching) or every vertex has outdegree one, except for
the root, which has outdegree zero (an inbranching). An immediate consequence of Proposition 1 is that
branchings satisfy Conjecture 1 (Havet and Thomassé [4]).
Corollary 1 Every branching on n ≥ 2 vertices is (2n − 2)-embeddable.
3. Well-Rooted Trees
Let A be a rooted oriented tree. If the root is a source, we shall say that A is well-rooted. The level
of a vertex v of A is its distance from the root in the underlying (undirected) tree of A. An arc (x, y)
of A is a forward arc if the level of y is greater than the level of x, and a backward arc otherwise. We
denote the subdigraph of A induced by its backward arcs by B(A) and the number of backward arcs by
b(A). A component of B(A) will be called a backward component of A. We denote the number of backward
components of A by c(A), and set d(A) := b(A) − c(A).
Theorem 1 Every well-rooted oriented tree A on n vertices is (2n + 2d)-embeddable, where d := d(A).
Proof We proceed by induction on c(A), the case c(A) = 0 being Corollary 1. Let A be a well-rooted
oriented tree on n ≥ 2 vertices, with root r and c(A) ≥ 1. We set b := b(A) and c := c(A). If A has a leaf
(x, y) which is a forward arc, we simply delete y and apply Proposition 1. So we may assume that every leaf
of A is a backward arc.
Let T be a tournament on 2n + 2d vertices, and let M := (v1 , v2 , . . . , v2n+2d ) be a median order of T .
We must show that A has an M -embedding f in T . Let B 0 be a backward component of A containing a
leaf of A. Denote its root by y. Observe that y 6= r because r is a source of A, by assumption. Let x be
the parent of y in A. The arc (x, y) is a forward arc. If B 0 has m vertices, A0 := A − B 0 has n − m vertices,
b − (m − 1) backward arcs and c − 1 backward components. Let T 0 := T [{v1 , v2 , . . . , v2n+2d−4m+4 }] and
M 0 := (v1 , v2 , . . . , v2n+2d−4m+4 ). By induction, A0 has an M 0 -embedding f 0 in T 0 .
Denote by A00 the oriented tree obtained from A0 by adding 2m − 2 forward arcs with tail x, and by
S the set of 2m − 2 new leaves. By Proposition 1, A00 has an M -embedding f 00 in T extending f 0 . The
subtournament of T induced by f 00 (S) has 2m−2 vertices, and therefore contains a copy B 00 of the branching
B 0 , by Corollary 1. Let g : V (B 0 ) → V (B 00 ) be an isomorphism of B 0 to B 00 . The mapping f : V (A) → V (T )
defined by
f (v) := f 0 (v), v ∈ V (A0 ), f (v) := g(v), v ∈ V (B 0 ),
is an M -embedding of A in T .
2
Corollary 2 Every oriented tree A on n ≥ 2 vertices is (3n − 3)-embeddable.
Proof Let A be an oriented tree A on n ≥ 2 vertices. We may assume that A has at least as many forward
arcs as backward arcs with respect to some root; if not, we consider the converse of A. We may also suppose
that A is not a branching, by Corollary 1. We root A so as to minimize d(A). The root r is then necessarily
a source, for if some vertex v dominated r, selecting v as root instead of r would reduce the value of d(A).
Thus A is well-rooted. We now apply Theorem 1. Since b(A) ≤ (n − 1)/2 and c(A) ≥ 1, d(A) ≤ (n − 3)/2,
and the result follows.
Call a rooted oriented tree path-like if every backward component is a directed path. Sumner’s conjecture
holds for path-like oriented trees.
Theorem 2 Every path-like oriented tree A on n ≥ 2 vertices is (2n − 2)-embeddable.
Proof The proof is essentially the same as that of Theorem 1 (and Corollary 2), the sole difference being
that only m forward arcs with tail x need be added to A0 , instead of 2m − 2, because every tournament
contains a directed Hamilton path by virtue of Rédei’s theorem [5].
We conclude by noting that Sumner’s conjecture, while interesting in its own sake, is just a particular case
of a much more general conjecture proposed several years later by Burr [1].
Conjecture 2 Every oriented tree on n ≥ 2 vertices is contained in every (2n − 2)-chromatic digraph.
In stark contrast to Sumner’s conjecture, very little is known regarding Burr’s conjecture. In particular,
a linear bound has yet to be established. Several results on the topic can be found in [1] and [7].
Acknowledgment. I would like to thank Professor Adrian Bondy for his helpful comments.
References
[1] S. A. Burr. Subtrees of directed graphs and hypergraphs. In Proceedings of the Eleventh Southeastern
conference on Combinatorics, Graph theory and Computing (Florida Atlantic Univ., Boca Raton, Fla.),
I, 28 (1980), pp. 227-239.
[2] R. Häggkvist and A. G. Thomason. Trees in tournaments. Combinatorica 11 (1991), 123-130.
[3] F. Havet. Trees in tournament. J. of Discrete Mathematic 243(1-3) (2002), 121-134
[4] F. Havet and S. Thomassé. Median orders of tournaments: a tool for the second neighborhood problem
and Sumner’s conjecture. J. Graph Theory 35 (2000), 244-256.
[5] L. Rédei, Ein kombinatorischer Satz, Acta Litt. Szeged 7 (1934), 39–43.
[6] K. B. Reid and N. C. Wormald Studia Sci. Math. Hungaria, 18 (1983), 377-387.
[7] A. El Sahili, Paths with two blocks in k-chromatic graphs, Discrete Math., to appear.
[8] N.C. Wormald. Subtrees of large tournaments. In Combinatorial Mathematics, X (Adelaide, 1982). Lec-
ture Notes in Math 1036 (1983), 417-419.

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Trees in tournaments

Conjecture 1 Every oriented tree on n ≥ 2 vertices is contained in every tournament on 2n − 2 vertices.

• every interval I := [vi+1 , vj ] of M is a median order of D[{vi+1 , vi+2 , . . . , vj }];

Let A and D be digraphs, and let M := (v1 , v2 , . . . , vn ) be a median order of D. An embedding of A

A digraph A is m-embeddable if A has an M -embedding in T for every tournament T on m vertices and

Theorem 2 Every path-like oriented tree A on n ≥ 2 vertices is (2n − 2)-embeddable.

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