Extremal values of vertex-degree-based topological indices over graphs (Q2346506)

Given a graph \(G\) with \(n\) vertices, a vertex-degree-based topological index is defined from a set of real numbers \(\{ \varphi_{ij} \}\) as \(\mathrm{TI}(G) =\sum m_{ij}(G) \varphi_{ij}\), where \(m_{ij}(G)\) is the number of edges between vertices of degree \(i\) and degree \(j\), and the sum runs over all \(1\leq i\leq j\leq n-1\). In this paper, we show that under certain conditions on the associated function \(\widehat{f}(i,j) =\frac{ij \varphi_{ij}}{i+j}\) and its partial derivatives, the extremal values of \(\widehat{f}\) are attained in the three points \((1,1)\), \((1,n-1)\) and \((n-1,n-1)\) of the region \(\widehat{K}=\{ (i,j) \in \mathbb {R} \times \mathbb {R} :1\leq i\leq j\leq n-1\}\), each of these points corresponding to \(K_{2}\cup K_{2}\cup \cdots \cup K_{2}\) (or \(K_{2}\cup K_{2}\cup \cdots \cup K_{2}\cup P_{3}\) if \(n\) is odd), the star \(S_{n}\) and the complete graph \(K_{n}\), respectively. As an application of this result, we find the extremal values of the well-known vertex-degree-based topological indices over \(\mathcal {G}_{n} \), the set of graphs with \(n\) non-isolated vertices.