Polynomial time recognition of vertices contained in all (or no) maximum dissociation sets of a tree

In a graph $G$, a dissociation set is a subset of vertices which induces a subgraph with vertex degree at most 1. Finding a dissociation set of maximum cardinality in a graph is NP-hard even for bipartite graphs and is called the maximum dissociation set problem. The complexity of the maximum dissociation set problem in various sub-classes of graphs has been extensively studied in the literature. In this paper, we study the maximum dissociation problem from different perspectives and characterize the vertices belonging to all maximum dissociation sets, and no maximum dissociation set of a tree. We present a linear time recognition algorithm which can determine whether a given vertex in a tree is contained in all (or no) maximum dissociation sets of the tree. Thus for a tree with $n$ vertices, we can find all vertices belonging to all (or no) maximum dissociation sets of the tree in $O(n^2)$ time.