Lower bound for $\sum_{v \in V(G)} d(v)\bar{d}(v)$

I did not check your equations in detail, but the construction you described does not minimize $\sum_v d(v) \bar{d}(v)$ for the case of $n=5, e=4$. For this case:

• $k:=\left\lceil\sqrt{2e+1/4}+1/2\right\rceil = \left\lceil\sqrt{8.25}+1/2\right\rceil = 4$

• $r = {k \choose 2} - e = {4 \choose 2} - 4 = 6 - 4 = 2$

So by your construction, you start with the $4$-clique (more commonly denoted $K_4 =$ complete graph of $4$ nodes), pick one of the nodes $w$ (degree $3$) and remove $2$ of its edges. You end up with a $3$-cycle (the other $3$ unpicked nodes) and a single edge connecting $w$ to one of the nodes in the cycle. Then since $n=5$ you add $1$ isolated node. We call this resulting $n=5, e=4$ graph $A$. The five node degrees of $A$ are: $0, 1, 2, 2, 3$ and the sum is $sum(A) = 0+3+4+4+3 = 14$.

However, the star graph $B$ (where a center node connects to everyone else and those are all the connections) of $n=5, e=4$ has node degrees $1,1,1,1,4$ and the sum is $sum(B) =3+3+3+3+0 = 12 < sum(A)$.

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I think your construction has a lot of merit, actually, but you missed a key fact:

As you noted, $\bar{d}(v)$ is the degree of $v$ in the complement graph $G' = (V, E')$ (i.e. where $e \in E'$ iff $e \notin E$). Therefore, the sum $\sum_v d(v) \bar{d}(v)$ is actually the same whether you consider $G$ or $G'$, since the complement of $G'$ is $G$ again. I.e. $\forall G: sum(G) = sum(G')$.

However, $e' = |E'| = {n \choose 2} - e$, and so if you start your construction procedure with $e$ or start with $e'$ you get two different graphs (obviously). It turns out they are not complements of each other, and can have different values for the sum.

My example is exactly that. If we use your construction but start with $n=5, e'=6$, we would have:

• $k':=\left\lceil\sqrt{2e'+1/4}+1/2\right\rceil = \left\lceil\sqrt{12.25}+1/2\right\rceil = \lceil 3.5 + 0.5 \rceil = 4$

• $r' = {k' \choose 2} - e' = {4 \choose 2} - 6 = 6 - 6 = 0$

So you would start with $K_4$, remove none of its edges, and simply add a $5$th isolated node. This graph, $C$, has node degrees are $3,3,3,3,0$ and $sum(C) = 3 + 3+ 3+ 3+ 0 = 12$. Since $C$ has $6$ edges, it does not qualify, but its complement $C'$ has $4$ edges and does qualify, and we already know $sum(C') = sum(C) = 12$. Now what is $C'$? It is exactly my star graph $B$.

To conclude: even if you think your procedure is great, after you use it on the given $(n, e)$ to get one graph $A$, you must also repeat your procedure starting with $(n, e' = {n \choose 2} - e)$ and get a different graph $C$. You are guaranteed that $C'$ has $e$ edges. So you need to pick $\min( sum(A), sum(C') )$.

I think it's an interesting question whether this two-pronged strategy will always minimize the sum for a given $(n,e)$.