Bounds on F-index of tricyclic graphs with fixed pendant vertices
Abstract The F-index F(G) of a graph G is obtained by the sum of cubes of the degrees of all the vertices in G. It is defined in the same paper of 1972 where the first and second Zagreb indices are introduced to study the structure-dependency of total π-electron energy. Recently, Furtula and Gutman [J. Math. Chem. 53 (2015), no. 4, 1184–1190] reinvestigated F-index and proved its various properties. A connected graph with order n and size m, such that m = n + 2, is called a tricyclic graph. In this paper, we characterize the extremal graphs and prove the ordering among the different subfamilies of graphs with respect to F-index in $\begin{array}{} \displaystyle {\it\Omega}^{\alpha}_n \end{array}$, where $\begin{array}{} \displaystyle {\it\Omega}^{\alpha}_n \end{array}$ is a complete class of tricyclic graphs with three, four, six and seven cycles, such that each graph has α ≥ 1 pendant vertices and n ≥ 16 + α order. Mainly, we prove the bounds (lower and upper) of F(G), i.e $$\begin{array}{} \displaystyle 8n+12\alpha +76\leq F(G)\leq 8(n-1)-7\alpha + (\alpha+6)^3 ~\mbox{for each}~ G\in {\it\Omega}^{\alpha}_n. \end{array}$$
