Solution to a conjecture on resistance diameter of lexicographic product of paths (Q6162033)

The resistance distance \(R[u, v]\) between two vertices \(u\) and \(v\) of a graph \(G\) is defined as the net effective resistance between them in the electric network constructed from \(G\) by replacing each edge with a unit resistor. The resistance diameter \(\operatorname{Dr}(G)\) of \(G\) is the maximum resistance distance among all pairs of vertices of \(G\). Given two path graphs \(P_n = a_1a_2\ldots a_n\) and \(P_m = b_1b_2\ldots b_m\), let \(P_n[P_m]\) be the lexicographic product of \(P_n\) and \(P_m\) with vertex set \(\{(ai, bj)|i = 1,\ldots ,n; j = 1, \ldots,m\}\). The paper by \textit{Y.-X. Li} et al. [J. Appl. Math. Comput. 68, No. 3, 1743--1755 (2022; Zbl 1486.05076)] shows that for \(n > 10\), the resistance diameter \(\operatorname{Dr} (P_n[P_m])\) of the lexicographic product of paths \(P_n\) and \(P_m\) satisfies the following. \[ \operatorname{Dr}(P_n[P_m]) = R[(a_1, b_1), (a_n, b_m)] = R[(a_1, b_1), (a_n, b_1)] = R[(a_1, b_m), (a_n, b_1)] = R[(a_1, b_m), (a_n, b_m)]. \] In addition, in the same article, they found that the result is not true for \(n = 2\). For \(3 \leq n \leq 10\) and small enough \(m\), they check by computer that the result is still true. On the basis of the observation by computer verification, they conjecture that the result is true for \(3 \leq n \leq 10\). In this paper, the authors confirm the conjecture using combinatorial and electrical network approaches.