Niko Tratnik: Generalized Cut Method Applied to Some Distance-Based Topological Indices

The cut method has an important role in the investigation of molecular descriptors. Very often it was applied to benzenoid systems to efficiently compute distance-based topological indices, for example the Wiener index and the Szeged index. Later, the cut method was generalized such that it can be used on any connected graph by using Djoković-Winkler relation. In this talk, we present the cut method for the edge version of the Wiener index and for an infinite family of Szeged-like topological indices.

In the first part, we focus on the edge-Wiener index, which is for any connected graph G defined as the Wiener index of the line graph of G. We show that the edge-Wiener index of an edge-weighted graph can be computed in terms of the three Wiener indices of weighted quotient graphs. Thus, already known analogous methods for computing the edge-Wiener index of benzenoid systems and phenylenes are generalized.

In the second part, we formally introduce the concept of a general Szeged-like topological index, which includes many well known topological indices (for example Szeged, PI and Mostar indices) and also infinitely many other topological indices that can be defined in a similar way. As the main result, we provide a cut method for computing a general Szeged-like topological index for any connected strength-weighted graph. This greatly generalizes various methods known for some of the mentioned indices.

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