Finding the ℓ-core of a tree

An ℓ-core of a tree T=(V,E) with |V|=n, is a path P with length at most ℓ that is central with respect to the property of minimizing the sum of the distances from the vertices in P to all the vertices of T not in P. The distance between two vertices is the length of the shortest path joining them. In this paper we present efficient algorithms for finding the ℓ-core of a tree. For unweighted trees we present an O(nℓ) time algorithm, while for weighted trees we give a procedure with time complexity of O(n log2 n). The algorithms use two different types of recursive principle in their operation.