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.