Ordering trees having small reverse Wiener indices

Abstract

The reverse Wiener index of a connected graph $G$ is a variation of the well-known Wiener index $W(G)$ defined as the sum of distances between all unordered pairs of vertices of $G$. It is defined as $\Lambda (G)=\frac{1}{2}n(n-1)d-W(G)$, where $n$ is the number of vertices, and $d$ is the diameter of $G$. We now determine the second and the third smallest reverse Wiener indices of $n$-vertex trees and characterize the trees whose reverse Wiener indices attain these values for $n\ge 6$ (it has been known that the star is the unique tree with the smallest reverse Wiener index).