On a Conjecture about the Sombor Index of Graphs

Let G be a graph with vertex set V(G) and edge set E(G). A graph invariant for G is a number related to the structure of G which is invariant under the symmetry of G. The Sombor and reduced Sombor indices of G are two new graph invariants defined as SO(G)=∑uv∈E(G)dG(u)2+dG(v)2 and SOred(G)=∑uv∈E(G)dG(u)−12+dG(v)−12, respectively, where dG(v) is the degree of the vertex v in G. We denote by Hn,ν the graph constructed from the star Sn by adding ν edge(s), 0≤ν≤n−2, between a fixed pendent vertex and ν other pendent vertices. Réti et al. [T. Réti, T Došlić and A. Ali, On the Sombor index of graphs, Contrib. Math.3 (2021) 11–18] proposed a conjecture that the graph Hn,ν has the maximum Sombor index among all connected ν-cyclic graphs of order n, where 0≤ν≤n−2. In some earlier works, the validity of this conjecture was proved for ν≤5. In this paper, we confirm that this conjecture is true, when ν=6. The Sombor index in the case that the number of pendent vertices is less than or equal to n−ν−2 is investigated, and the same results are obtained for the reduced Sombor index. Some relationships between Sombor, reduced Sombor, and first Zagreb indices of graphs are also obtained