Globally balancing spanning trees

Abstract

We show that for every graph $G$ that contains two edge-disjoint spanning trees, we can choose two edge-disjoint spanning trees $T_1,T_2$ of $G$ such that $|d_{T_1}(v)-d_{T_2}(v)|\leq 5$ for all $v \in V(G)$. We also prove the more general statement that for every positive integer $k$, there is a constant $c_k \in O(\log k)$ such that for every graph $G$ that contains $k$ edge-disjoint spanning trees, we can choose $k$ edge-disjoint spanning trees $T_1,\ldots,T_k$ of $G$ satisfying $|d_{T_i}(v)-d_{T_j}(v)|\leq c_k$ for all $v \in V(G)$ and $i,j \in \{1,\ldots,k\}$. This resolves a conjecture of Kriesell.