Regular independent sets

Abstract

The regular independence number, introduced by Albertson and Boutin in 1990, is the size of a largest set of independent vertices with the same degree. Lower bounds were proven for this invariant, in terms of the order, for trees and planar graphs. In this article, we generalize and extend these results to find lower bounds for the regular $k$-independence number for trees, forests, planar graphs, $k$-trees and $k$-degenerate graphs.