Wiener Index of Trees: Theory and Applications

The Wiener index W is the sum of distances between all pairs of vertices of a (connected) graph. The paper outlines the results known for W of trees: methods for computation of W and combinatorial expressions for W for various classes of trees, the isomorphism–discriminating power of W, connections between W and the center and centroid of a tree, as well as between W and the Laplacian eigenvalues, results on the Wiener indices of the line graphs of trees, on trees extremal w.r.t. W, and on integers which cannot be Wiener indices of trees. A few conjectures and open problems are mentioned, as well as the applications of W in chemistry, communication theory and elsewhere.     

固定直径的树的Wiener指数

图G的wiener指数定义为图中所有点对u,v的距离之和∑d（u,v）. 在这篇文章中,我们刻画了在n个顶点直径为d的所有树中具有第三小wiener指数的树的特征以及介绍了得到这类树的wiener指数排序的方法.     

Enumeration of Wiener indices in random polygonal chains

The Wiener index of a connected graph (molecule graph) G is the sum of the distances between all pairs of vertices of G, which was reported by Wiener in 1947 and is the oldest topological index related to molecular branching. In this paper, simple formulae of the expected value of the Wiener index in a random polygonal chain and the asymptotic behavior of this expectation are established by solving a difference equation. Based on the results above, we obtain the average value of the Wiener index of all polygonal chains with n polygons. As applications, we use the unified formulae to obtain the expected values of the Wiener indices of some special random polygonal chains which were deeply discussed in the context of organic chemistry or statistical physics.     

The sum of the distances between the leaves of a tree and the 'semi-regular' property

Various topological indices have been put forward in different studies, from biochemistry to pure mathematics. Among them, the Wiener index, the number of subtrees, and the Randi? index have received great attention from mathematicians. In the study of extremal problems regarding these indices among trees, one interesting phenomenon is that they share the same extremal tree structures. Much effort was devoted to the study of the correlations between these various indices. In this note we provide a common characteristic (the ‘semi-regular’ property) of these extremal structures, with respect to the above mentioned indices, among trees with a given maximum degree. This observation leads to a more unified approach for characterizing these extremal structures. As an application/example, we illustrate the idea by studying the extremal trees, regarding the sum of distances between all pairs of leaves of a tree, a new index, which recently appeared in phylogenetic tree reconstruction, and the study of the neighborhood of trees.     

Binary trees with the largest number of subtrees

This paper characterizes binary trees with n leaves, which have the greatest number of subtrees. These binary trees coincide with those which were shown by Fischermann et al. [Wiener index versus maximum degree in trees, Discrete Appl. Math. 122(1-3) (2002) 127-137] and Jelen and Triesch [Superdominance order and distance of trees with bounded maximum degree, Discrete Appl. Math. 125 (2-3) (2003) 225-233] to minimize the Wiener index.     

Precise Logarithmic Asymptotics for the Right Tails of Some Limit Random Variables for Random Trees

For certain random variables that arise as limits of functionals of random finite trees, we obtain precise asymptotics for the logarithm of the right-hand tail. Our results are based on the facts (i) that the random variables we study can be represented as functionals of a Brownian excursion and (ii) that a large deviation principle with good rate function is known explicitly for Brownian excursion. Examples include limit distributions of the total path length and of the Wiener index in conditioned Galton-Watson trees (also known as simply generated trees). In the case of Wiener index (where we recover results proved by Svante Janson and Philippe Chassaing by a different method) and for some other examples, a key constant is expressed as the solution to a certain optimization problem, but the constant’s precise value remains unknown. Research supported by NSF grants DMS-0104167 and DMS-0406104 and by The Johns Hopkins University’s Acheson J. Duncan Fund for the Advancement of Research in Statistics.     

On the Wiener index of random trees

By a theorem of Janson, the Wiener index of a random tree from a simply generated family of trees converges in distribution to a limit law that can be described in terms of the Brownian excursion. The family of unlabelled trees (rooted or unrooted), which is perhaps the most natural one from a graph-theoretical point of view, since isomorphisms are taken into account, is not covered directly by this theorem though. The aim of this paper is to show how one can prove the same limit law for unlabelled trees by means of generating functions and the method of moments.     

The Number of Subtrees of Trees with Given Degree Sequence

This article investigates some properties of the number of subtrees of a tree with given degree sequence. These results are used to characterize trees with the given degree sequence that have the largest number of subtrees, which generalize the recent results of Kirk and Wang (SIAM J Discrete Math 22 (2008), 985–995). These trees coincide with those which were proven by Wang and independently Zhang et al. (2008) to minimize the Wiener index. We also provide a partial ordering of the extremal trees with different degree sequences, some extremal results follow as corollaries.     

The minimum Wiener index of unicyclic graphs with a fixed diameter

The Wiener index is the sum of distances between all pairs of distinct vertices in a connected graph, which is the oldest topological index related to molecular branching. In the article we characterize the graphs having the minimum Wiener index among all n-vertex unicyclic graphs with a fixed diameter.     

A Class of Trees and its Wiener Index

In this paper, we will consider the Wiener index for a class of trees that is connected to partitions of integers. Our main theorem is the fact that every integer is the Wiener index of a member of this class. As a consequence, this proves a conjecture of Lepović and Gutman. The paper also contains extremal and average results on the Wiener index of the studied class.This work was supported by Austrian Science Fund project no. S-8307-MAT.     

The Wiener maximum quadratic assignment problem

We investigate a special case of the maximum quadratic assignment problem where one matrix is a product matrix and the other matrix is the distance matrix of a one-dimensional point set. We show that this special case, which we call the Wiener maximum quadratic assignment problem, is NP-hard in the ordinary sense and solvable in pseudo-polynomial time.Our approach also yields a polynomial time solution for the following problem from chemical graph theory: find a tree that maximizes the Wiener index among all trees with a prescribed degree sequence. This settles an open problem from the literature.     

若干图类的Wiener指数的极值

一个图的Wiener指数是指这个图中所有点对的距离和.Wiener指数在理论化学中有广泛应用. 本文刻画了给定顶点数及特定参数如色数或团数的图中Wiener指数达最小值的图, 同时也刻画了给定顶点数及团数的图中Wiener指数达最大值的图.     

Hitting Times,Cover Cost,and the Wiener Index of a Tree

We exhibit a close connection between hitting times of the simple random walk on a graph, the Wiener index, and related graph invariants. In the case of trees, we obtain a simple identity relating hitting times to the Wiener index. It is well known that the vertices of any graph can be put in a linear preorder so that vertices appearing earlier in the preorder are “easier to reach” by a random walk, but “more difficult to get out of.” We define various other natural preorders and study their relationships. These preorders coincide when the graph is a tree, but not necessarily otherwise. Our treatise is self‐contained, and puts some known results relating the behavior or random walk on a graph to its eigenvalues in a new perspective.     

一类三圈图的Wiener指数

图G的Wiener指数是指图G中所有顶点对间的距离之和,即W（G）=∑dc（u,u）,{u,u}CG其中de（u,u）表示G中顶点u,u之间的距离.三圈图是指边数与顶点数之差等于2的连通图,任意两个圈至多只有一个公共点的三圈图记为T_n~3.研究了三圈图T_n~3的Wiener指数,给出了其具有最小、次小Wiener指数的图结构.     

一类苯环的Kirchhoff指标（英文）

如果用单位电阻来代替图G中的每条边得到一个电网络,而顶点i和j之间的电阻距离（Resistance distance）定义为此网络中节点i和j之间的等效电阻的阻值.图G的Kirchhoff指标定义为G中所有点对之间的电阻距离和.本文利用循环矩阵的理论得到了一类苯环R_n的Kirchhoff指标的计算公式,而且我们证明了R_n的Kirchhoff指标渐近等于R_n的Wiener指标的一半.