On the number of leaves of a euclidean minimal spanning tree

Abstract

Let Vk,n be the number of vertices of degree k in the Euclidean minimal spanning tree of Xi, , where the Xi are independent, absolutely continuous random variables with values in Rd. It is proved that n–1Vk,n converges with probability 1 to a constant α k,d. Intermediate results provide information about how the vertex degrees of a minimal spanning tree change as points are added or deleted, about the decomposition of minimal spanning trees into probabilistically similar trees, and about the mean and variance of Vk,n.