English

A Generalization of the Graham-Pollak Tree Theorem to Steiner Distance

Combinatorics 2023-06-02 v1 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

Graham and Pollak showed that the determinant of the distance matrix of a tree TT depends only on the number of vertices of TT. Graphical distance, a function of pairs of vertices, can be generalized to ``Steiner distance'' of sets SS of vertices of arbitrary size, by defining it to be the fewest edges in any connected subgraph containing all of SS. Here, we show that the same is true for trees' {\em Steiner distance hypermatrix} of all odd orders, whereas the theorem of Graham-Pollak concerns order 22. We conjecture that the statement holds for all even orders as well.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2306.00243,
  title  = {A Generalization of the Graham-Pollak Tree Theorem to Steiner Distance},
  author = {Joshua Cooper and Gabrielle Tauscheck},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.00243},
  year   = {2023}
}

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7 pages