Edge Addition and the Change in Kemeny's Constant

Abstract

Given a connected graph $G$, Kemeny's constant $\mathcal{K}(G)$ measures the average travel time for a random walk to reach a randomly selected vertex. It is known that when an edge is added to $G$, the value of Kemeny's constant may either decrease, increase, or stay the same. In this paper, we present a quantitative analysis of this behaviour when the initial graph is a tree with $n$ vertices. We prove that when an edge is added into a tree on $n$ vertices, the maximum possible increase in Kemeny's constant is roughly $\frac{2}{3}n,$ while the maximum possible decrease is roughly $\frac{3}{16}{n}^2$. We also identify the trees, and the edges to be added, that correspond to the maximum increase and maximum decrease. Throughout, both matrix theoretic and graph theoretic techniques are employed.