Notes on the harmonic index of graphs (Q2678296)

The harmonic index of a graph \(G\) is defined as \(H(G)=\sum_{un\in E(G)}\frac{2}{d(u)+d(v)}\), where \(E(G)\) is the set of edges of \(G\) and \(d(u)\) is the degree of the vertex \(u\). The authors in this paper give a lower bound for \(H(G)\) in terms of \(\chi_{DP}(G)\), the DP-chromatic number of \(G\). More precisely, they show that \[ H(G)\geq \frac{\chi_{DP}(G)-2}{2}+\frac{2\left(\chi_{DP}(G) -1\right) }{n+\chi_{DP}(G)-2} +\frac{2\left(n- \chi_{DP}(G)\right) }{n}, \] and this bound is sharp for all \(n\) and \(2\leq \chi_{DP}(G \leq n.\) This generalizes a result by \textit{J.-B. Lv} and \textit{J. Li} [Discrete Appl. Math. 284, 611--615 (2020; Zbl 1443.05072)] which states that \[ H(G)\geq \frac{\chi_{DP}(G)}{2}, \] and equality occurs if and only if \(G\) is a complete graph possibly with some additional isolated vertices. Finally, they determine the structure of trees with minimum harmonic index among all trees with order \(n\) and segment \(l=\left(l_{1}, \ldots , l_{m}\right). \)