Wiener indices of spiro and polyphenyl hexagonal chains

The Wiener index W(G) of a connected graph G is the sum of distances between all pairs of vertices in G. In this paper, we first give the recurrences or explicit formulae for computing the Wiener indices of spiro and polyphenyl hexagonal chains, which are graphs of a class of unbranched multispiro molecules and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, then we establish a relation between the Wiener indices of a spiro hexagonal chain and its corresponding polyphenyl hexagonal chain, and determine the extremal values and characterize the extremal graphs with respect to the Wiener index among all spiro and polyphenyl hexagonal chains with n hexagons, respectively. An interesting result shows that the average value of the Wiener indices with respect to the set of all such hexagonal chains is exactly the average value of the Wiener indices of three special hexagonal chains, and is just the Wiener index of the meta-chain. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.