On the minimum variable connectivity index of unicyclic graphs with a given order (Q2194586)

Summary: The variable connectivity index, introduced by the chemist Milan Randić in the first quarter of 1990s, for a graph \(G\) is defined as \({\sum\nolimits_{v w \in E \left( G\right)} \left( \left( d_v + \gamma\right) \left( d_w + \gamma\right)\right)^{- 1 / 2}}\), where \(\gamma\) is a non-negative real number and \(d_w\) is the degree of a vertex \(w\) in \(G\). We call this index as the variable Randić index and denote it by \({\displaystyle{}^vR}_\gamma \). In this paper, we show that the graph created from the star graph of order \(n\) by adding an edge has the minimum \({\displaystyle{}^vR}_\gamma\) value among all unicyclic graphs of a fixed order \(n\), for every \(n\geq4\) and \(\gamma\geq0\).