On the eccentric connectivity coindex in graphs

The well-studied eccentric connectivity index directly consider the contribution of all edges in a graph. By considering the total eccentricity sum of all non-adjacent vertex, Hua et al. proposed a new topological index, namely, eccentric connectivity coindex of a connected graph. The eccentric connectivity coindex of a connected graph $G$ is defined as

$${\overline{\xi }}^c(G)=\sum _{uv\notin E(G)}({\epsilon }_G(u)+{\epsilon }_G(v)).$$

Where ${\epsilon }_G(u)$ (resp. ${\epsilon }_G(v)$) is the eccentricity of the vertex $u$ (resp. $v$). In this paper, some extremal problems on the ${\overline{\xi }}^c$ of graphs with given parameters are considered. We present the sharp lower bounds on ${\overline{\xi }}^c$ for general connecteds graphs. We determine the smallest eccentric connectivity coindex of cacti of given order and cycles. Also, we characterize the graph with minimum and maximum eccentric connectivity coindex among all the trees with given order and diameter. Additionally, we determine the smallest eccentric connectivity coindex of unicyclic graphs with given order and diameter and the corresponding extremal graph is characterized as well.