On the Gomori-Hu inequality

Abstract

It was proved by Gomori and Hu in 1961 that for every finite nonempty ultrametric space $(X,d)$ the following inequality $|\Sp(X)|\leqslant |X|-1$ holds with $\Sp(X)=\{d(x,y):x,y \in X, x\neq y\}$. We characterize the spaces $X$, for which the equality in this inequality is attained by the structural properties of some graphs and show that the set of isometric types of such $X$ is dense in the Gromov-Hausdorff space of the compact ultrametric spaces.