Disproof of a conjecture on the minimum Wiener index of signed trees

Abstract

The Wiener index of a connected graph is the sum of distances between all unordered pairs of vertices. Sam Spiro [The Wiener index of signed graphs, Appl. Math. Comput., 416(2022)126755] recently introduced the Wiener index for a signed graph and conjectured that the path $P_n$ with alternating signs has the minimum Wiener index among all signed trees with $n$ vertices. By constructing an infinite family of counterexamples, we prove that the conjecture is false whenever $n$ is at least 30.