Topological classification of binary trees using the Horton-Strahler index.

Abstract

The Horton-Strahler (HS) index r=max(i,j)+delta(i,j) has been shown to be relevant to a number of physical (such as diffusion limited aggregation) geological (river networks), biological (pulmonary arteries, blood vessels, various species of trees), and computational (use of registers) applications. Here we revisit the enumeration problem of the HS index on the rooted, unlabeled, plane binary set of trees, and enumerate the same index on the ambilateral set of rooted, plane binary set of trees of n leaves. The ambilateral set is a set of trees whose elements cannot be obtained from each other via an arbitrary number of reflections with respect to vertical axes passing through any of the nodes on the tree. For the unlabeled set we give an alternate derivation to the existing exact solution. Extending this technique for the ambilateral set, which is described by an infinite series of nonlinear functional equations, we are able to give a double exponentially converging approximant to the generating functions in a neighborhood of their convergence circle, and derive an explicit asymptotic form for the number of such trees.