Bo Zhou talks with
ScienceWatch.com and answers a few questions about
this month's Emerging Research Front Paper in the field of
Mathematics.
Article: Minimal energy of bipartite unicyclic
graphs of a given bipartition
Authors: Li, F;Zhou,
B
Journal: MATCH-COMMUN MATH COMPUT CHEM, 54 (2): 379-388
2005
Addresses: S China Normal Univ, Dept Math, Guangzhou
510631, Peoples R China.
S China Normal Univ, Dept Math, Guangzhou 510631, Peoples R
China.
Why do you think your paper is highly
cited?
I think one reason is that, prior to our article, there seemed to have been
only one previous paper which focused on the energy of unicyclic graphs.
Before this, people had not yet classified the group of unicyclic graphs
examined in this paper.
Does it describe a new discovery, methodology, or
synthesis of knowledge?
It describes some new results, mainly which bipartite unicyclic graphs of a
given bipartition achieve minimal energy.
Would you summarize the significance of your paper in
layman's terms?
The energy of a graph is defined as the sum of the absolute values of all
the eigenvalues of the graph. In this paper, we characterize the graphs
with minimal energy in the class of bipartite unicyclic graphs
(representing molecules), of a given (p,q)-bipartition, where q = p = 2.
How did you become involved in this research and were
any particular problems encountered along the way?
The authors considered some special classes of graphs, e.g., trees, prior
to beginning this research.
Where do you see your research leading in the
future?
Toward determining the extremes of energy for various classes of graphs of
chemical interest, even that of other graph descriptors
Professor Bo Zhou
Department of Mathematics
South China Normal University
Guangzhou, People's Republic of China