English

Extremal values for Steiner distances and the Steiner $k$-Wiener index

Combinatorics 2023-02-07 v1

Abstract

Various questions related to distances between vertices of simple, finite graphs are of interest to extremal graph theorists. The Steiner distance of a set of kk vertices is a natural generalization of the regular distance. We extend several theorems on the middle parts and extremal values of trees from their regular distance variants to their Steiner distance variants. More specifically, we show that for a tree TT, the Steiner kk-distance, Steiner kk-leaf-distance, and Steiner kk-internal-distance are all concave along a path. We also calculate distances between the Steiner kk-median, Steiner kk-internal-median, and Steiner kk-leaf-median. Letting the Steiner kk-distance of a vertex vV(T)v \in V(T) be \ddkT(v)\dd_k^T(v), we find bounds based on the order of TT for the ratios \ddkT(u)\ddkT(v)\frac{\dd^T_{k}(u)}{\dd^T_{k}(v)}, \ddkT(w)\ddkT(z)\frac{\dd^T_{k}(w)}{\dd^T_{k}(z)}, and \ddkT(u)\ddkT(y)\frac{\dd^T_{k}(u)}{\dd^T_{k}(y)} where uu and vv are leaves, ww and zz are internal vertices, and yy is a Steiner kk-centroid. Also, denoting the Steiner kk-Wiener index as SWk(T)\mathsf{SW}_k(T), we find upper and lower bounds for SWk(T)\ddkG(v)\frac{\mathsf{SW}_k(T)}{\dd^G_{k}(v)}. The extremal graphs that produce these bounds are also presented.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2302.02311,
  title  = {Extremal values for Steiner distances and the Steiner $k$-Wiener index},
  author = {Hua Wang and Andrew Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2302.02311},
  year   = {2023}
}