Functions on Adjacent Vertex Degrees of Trees with Given Degree Sequence

In this note we consider a discrete symmetric function f(x, y) where f(x; a) + f(y, b) ≥ f(y, a) + f(x, b) for any x ≥ y and a ≥ b, associated with the degrees of adjacent vertices in a tree. The extremal trees with respect to the corresponding graph invariant, defined as Σ uv∈E(T) f(deg(u), deg(v)), are characterized by the “greedy tree” and “alternating greedy tree”. This is achieved through simple generalizations of previously used ideas on similar questions. As special cases, the already known extremal structures of the Randić index follow as corollaries. The extremal structures for the relatively new sum-connectivity index and harmonic index also follow immediately, some of these extremal structures have not been identified in previous studies

On the extremal properties of the average eccentricity

The eccentricity of a vertex is the maximum distance from it to another vertex and the average eccentricity $ecc (G)$ of a graph $G$ is the mean value of eccentricities of all vertices of $G$. The average eccentricity is deeply connected with a topological descriptor called the eccentric connectivity index, defined as a sum of products of vertex degrees and eccentricities. In this paper we analyze extremal properties of the average eccentricity, introducing two graph transformations that increase or decrease $ecc (G)$. Furthermore, we resolve four conjectures, obtained by the system AutoGraphiX, about the average eccentricity and other graph parameters (the clique number, the Randi\' c index and the independence number), refute one AutoGraphiX conjecture about the average eccentricity and the minimum vertex degree and correct one AutoGraphiX conjecture about the domination number.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figure

Trees with Given Stability Number and Minimum Number of Stable Sets

We study the structure of trees minimizing their number of stable sets for given order $n$ and stability number $\alpha$. Our main result is that the edges of a non-trivial extremal tree can be partitioned into $n-\alpha$ stars, each of size $\lceil \frac{n-1}{n-\alpha} \rceil$ or $\lfloor \frac{n-1}{n-\alpha}\rfloor$, so that every vertex is included in at most two distinct stars, and the centers of these stars form a stable set of the tree.Comment: v2: Referees' comments incorporate

Largest Laplacian Eigenvalue and Degree Sequences of Trees

We investigate the structure of trees that have greatest maximum eigenvalue among all trees with a given degree sequence. We show that in such an extremal tree the degree sequence is non-increasing with respect to an ordering of the vertices that is obtained by breadth-first search. This structure is uniquely determined up to isomorphism. We also show that the maximum eigenvalue in such classes of trees is strictly monotone with respect to majorization.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figure

Eccentric connectivity index

The eccentric connectivity index $\xi^c$ is a novel distance--based molecular structure descriptor that was recently used for mathematical modeling of biological activities of diverse nature. It is defined as $\xi^c (G) = \sum_{v \in V (G)} deg (v) \cdot \epsilon (v)$\,, where $deg (v)$ and $\epsilon (v)$ denote the vertex degree and eccentricity of $v$\,, respectively. We survey some mathematical properties of this index and furthermore support the use of eccentric connectivity index as topological structure descriptor. We present the extremal trees and unicyclic graphs with maximum and minimum eccentric connectivity index subject to the certain graph constraints. Sharp lower and asymptotic upper bound for all graphs are given and various connections with other important graph invariants are established. In addition, we present explicit formulae for the values of eccentric connectivity index for several families of composite graphs and designed a linear algorithm for calculating the eccentric connectivity index of trees. Some open problems and related indices for further study are also listed.Comment: 25 pages, 5 figure