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

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

The Connectivity and the Harary Index of a Graph

The Harary index of a graph is defined as the sum of reciprocals of distances between all pairs of vertices of the graph. In this paper we provide an upper bound of the Harary index in terms of the vertex or edge connectivity of a graph. We characterize the unique graph with maximum Harary index among all graphs with given number of cut vertices or vertex connectivity or edge connectivity. In addition we also characterize the extremal graphs with the second maximum Harary index among the graphs with given vertex connectivity