A lower bound on the total vertex-edge domination number of a tree

Abstract

A vertex [Formula: see text] of a graph [Formula: see text] is said to vertex-edge dominate every edge incident to [Formula: see text], as well as every edge adjacent to these incident edges. A subset [Formula: see text] is a vertex-edge dominating set (ve-dominating set) if every edge of [Formula: see text] is vertex-edge dominated by at least one vertex of [Formula: see text]. A vertex-edge dominating set is said to be total if its induced subgraph has no isolated vertices. The minimum cardinality of a total vertex-edge dominating set of [Formula: see text], denoted by [Formula: see text], is called the total vertex-edge domination number of [Formula: see text]. In this paper, we prove that for every nontrivial tree of order [Formula: see text], with [Formula: see text] leaves and [Formula: see text] support vertices we have [Formula: see text], and we characterize extremal trees attaining the lower bound.