Concerning the Number of Edges in a Graph with Diameter Constraints

We study problems related to the number of edges of a graph with diameter constraints. We show that the problem of finding, in a graph of diameter \(k \geq 2\), a spanning subgraph of diameter \(k\) with the minimum number of edges is NP-hard. In addition, we propose some efficient heuristic algorithms for solving this problem. We also investigate the number of edges in a critical graph of diameter 2. We collect some evidence which supports our conjecture that the number of edges in a critical graph of diameter 2 is at most \(\Delta(n-\Delta)\) where \(\Delta\) is the maximum degree. In particular, we show that our conjecture is true for \(\Delta \leq \frac{1}{2}n\) or \(\Delta \geq n-5\).