English

On roots of Wiener polynomials of trees

Combinatorics 2018-07-31 v1

Abstract

The \emph{Wiener polynomial} of a connected graph GG is the polynomial W(G;x)=i=1D(G)di(G)xiW(G;x) = \sum_{i=1}^{D(G)} d_i(G)x^i where D(G)D(G) is the diameter of GG, and di(G)d_i(G) is the number of pairs of vertices at distance ii from each other. We examine the roots of Wiener polynomials of trees. We prove that the collection of real Wiener roots of trees is dense in (,0](-\infty, 0], and the collection of complex Wiener roots of trees is dense in C\mathbb C. We also prove that the maximum modulus among all Wiener roots of trees of order n31n \ge 31 is between 2n152n-15 and 2n162n-16, and we determine the unique tree that achieves the maximum for n31n \ge 31. Finally, we find trees of arbitrarily large diameter whose Wiener roots are all real.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1807.10967,
  title  = {On roots of Wiener polynomials of trees},
  author = {Danielle Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1807.10967},
  year   = {2018}
}