Maximal Independent Sets in Generalised Caterpillar Graphs

Abstract: A caterpillar graph is a tree which on removal of all its pendant vertices leaves a chordless path. The chordless path is called the backbone of the graph. The edges from the backbone to the pendant vertices are called the hairs of the caterpillar graph. Ortiz and Villanueva (C.Ortiz and M.Villanueva, Discrete Applied Mathematics, 160(3): 259-266, 2012) describe an algorithm, linear in the size of the output, for finding a family of maximal independent sets in a caterpillar graph. In this paper, we propose an algorithm, again linear in the output size, for a generalised caterpillar graph, where at each vertex of the backbone, there can be any number of hairs of length one and at most one hair of length two.