International Journal of CombinatoricsVolume 2012 (2012), Article ID 909285, 10 pagesdoi:10.1155/2012/909285

Research Article

The and -Analogs of Zagreb Indices and Coindices of Graphs

Toufik Mansour¹ and Chunwei Song²

¹Department of Mathematics, University of Haifa, 31905 Haifa, Israel²School of Mathematical Sciences, LMAM, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China

Received 9 September 2011; Accepted 20 October 2011

Academic Editor: Alois Panholzer

Copyright © 2012 Toufik Mansour and Chunwei Song. Toufik Mansour and . This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract.

The first and second Zagreb indices were first introduced by Gutman and Trinajstić (1972). It is reported that these indices are useful in the study of anti-inflammatory activities of certain chemical instances, and in elsewhere. Recently, the first and second Zagreb coindices, a new pair of invariants, were introduced in Došlić (2008). In this paper we introduce the and ()-analogs of the above Zagreb indices and coindices and investigate the relationship between the enhanced versions to get a unified theory.

1. Introduction

Like in many other branches of mathematics, one tries to find in graph theory certain invariants of graphs which depend only on the graph itself (or in other cases, in addition to, an embedding into the plane or some other manifold), see, for example, [1] and the references given therein. A graph invariant is any function on a graph that does not depend on a labeling of its vertices. A big number of different invariants have been employed to date in graphs structural studies as well as through a broad range of applications including molecular biology, organic chemistry, nuclear physics, neurology, psychology, linguistics, logistics, and economics, see [2]. Here we are interested in the theory of Zagreb indices and Zagreb coindices. The first and second kinds of Zagreb indices were first introduced in [3] (see also [4]). It is reported that these indices are useful in the study of anti-inflammatory activities of certain chemical instances, and in other practical aspects. Recently, the first and second Zagreb coindices, a new pair of invariants, were introduced in [5]. In this paper we introduce the and -analogs of the above Zagreb indices and coindices and investigate the relationship between the enhanced versions to get a unified theory. Insightfully, this theory will have its place and influence in the territory of mathematical chemistry.

Throughout this work we consider only simple and finite graphs, that is, finite graphs without multiedges or loops. For terms and concepts not mentioned here we refer, for instance, the readers to [6–8]. Let be a finite simple graph on vertices and edges. We denote the set of vertices of by and the set of edges of by . The complement of , denoted by , is a simple graph on the set of vertices in which two vertices are adjacent if and only if they are not adjacent in . Thus, if and only if . Clearly, , which implies that . We denote the degree of a vertex in a graph by . It is easy to see that for all . We will omit the subscript in the degree and other notation if the graph is clear from the context.

Definition 1.1. The first and second Zagreb indices are defined to be respectively.

Note that the first Zagreb index may also written as see [9]. The first and second Zagreb indices, first appeared in a topological formula for the total -energy of conjugated molecules, were introduced by Gutman and Trinajstić in 1972 [3]. Since then these indices have been used as branching indices [10]. The Zagreb indices are found to have applications in QSPR and QSAR studies as well (see [11], e.g.).

The first and second Zagreb coindices were formally introduced in [12] to take account of the contributions of pairs of nonadjacent vertices, with regard to due properties of chemical molecules.

Definition 1.2. The first and second Zagreb coindices are defined to be respectively.

Note that the Zagreb coindices of are not Zagreb indices of : while the defining sums are over the set of edges of , the degrees are still with respect to . So in general , .

Now we introduce three -analogs of the first Zagreb index.

Definition 1.3. The first kind vertex -Zagreb index, edge -Zagreb index, and -Zagreb coindex are defined in order as follows It is not hard to see that , and . Also, , .

Recently, the index was defined and studied by Zhou and Trinajstić [13], which proved to be a good language in the study of several topological indices.

Next is the analog theory of the second Zagreb index and coindex. For these invariants involving sums of products, we need two parameters to take account of both parties. we define the second kind -Zagreb index and -Zagreb coindex.

Definition 1.4. The second kind -Zagreb index and -Zagreb coindex are, respectively, Clearly,

Remark 1.5. The Randić [14, 15] index of a graph was first introduced in 1975 by computational chemist Milan Randić. In 1998, Bollobás and Erdös extended into the general Randić index: [16]. This graph invariant, sometimes referred to as connectivity index, has been related to a variety of physical, chemical, and pharmacological properties of organic molecules and has become one of the most popular molecular-structure descriptors (see in particular [14, 17–20]). Note that the second kind -Zagreb index actually exists as a double-variable version of the general Randić index: Hence, by applying our general results above we may find a relationship between and .

The main goal of the second section of this paper is to establish relationship between the three -analogs of the first Zagreb index and coindex. And in the last section we will investigate the second -Zagreb index and coindex.

2. The First -Zagreb Index and Coindex

Next we show how to express the first kind vertex -Zagreb index and -Zagreb coindex in terms of the first kind edge -Zagreb index.

We start by stating a basic relation between the vertex and edge versions of first kind -Zagreb indices.

Proposition 2.1. Let be a simple graph. For all , .

Proof. By the definition of , each vertex contributes to the sum exactly . Therefore, , as required.

Next we explore , which looks amazingly close to . (Later in the proof of Theorem 2.3, we will see the connection between the two.)

Proposition 2.2. Let be a simple graph on vertices and edges. For all ,

Proof. Noting that Hence by Proposition 2.1, completing the proof.

Theorem 2.3. Let be a simple graph on vertices and edges. For ,

Proof. From the definitions, Thus, by Proposition 2.2, When taking off the bracket in the above expression, the first sum obtained is equivalent to zero. So we have Using the identity (after a little careful analysis), we obtain that , as claimed.

Example 2.4. Let , Theorem 2.3 implies that . This is the result shown at [5, Proposition  2].

Rewriting Theorem 2.3 for the complement graph of , one can see the following result about “co-complement.”

Proposition 2.5. Let and let be any simple graph. Then

Proof. By Theorem 2.3 we have . Then according to Proposition 2.2, as desired.

Remark 2.6. To conclude, the first kind vertex -Zagreb index , the -Zagreb coindex , and their operations on complement graphs and may all be expressed explicitly via the first kind edge -Zagreb indices . Hence, from now on we will rename the the edge -Zagreb index to the “first kind -Zagreb index.”

Example 2.7. The following are the first kind -Zagreb index and coindex for complete graphs, paths, and cycles on vertices by direct calculations:

3. The Second -Zagreb Index and Coindex

Let be any simple graph with edges, then from the definition we have and .

The second kind -Zagreb index and coindex are about complementary to each other, but not commutable. Specifically, if we think of the coindex as an operation “co” conducted on the second kind -Zagreb index and the graph complement as another operation on the second kind -Zagreb index , then the order of the two operations does matter. Actually even for the special cases of versus and of versus (), there is no exchangeability. Nonetheless we demonstrate a convolution theorem of the two operations mentioned.

Theorem 3.1. Let be a simple graph. For all ,

Proof. For (3.1), from the definitions, as claimed.And similarly for (3.2), noting that

Remark 3.2. Even though the convoluted recurrences between the co-complement operations are established by Theorem 3.1, one can not use induction to prove that because that is wrong starting from the basic step.

Theorem 3.3. Let be a simple graph. For all ,

Proof. From the definitions we have Thus, by Theorem 3.1 we obtain which implies that Using the fact that , we obtain which implies that which implies our claim.

Example 3.4. The -Zagreb for complete graphs, paths, and cycles on vertices are calculated:

Recently, Ashrafi et al. [21] considered the Zagreb coindices of graph operations, such as those of union, sum, Cartesian product, disjunction, symmetric difference, composition, and corona. Similar and interesting treatment is also found in [22]. Being a vividly growing field of mathematical chemistry, many interesting phenomena are under discovery and much work still needs to be done.

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