On the Diminished Sombor Index of Fixed-Order Molecular Graphs With Cyclomatic Number at Least 3

For a graph $G$ with edge set $E$, let $d(u)$ denote the degree of a vertex $u$ in $G$. The diminished Sombor (DSO) index of $G$ is defined as $DSO(G)={\sum }_{uv\in E}\sqrt{(d(u){)}^2+(d(v){)}^2}(d(u)+d(v){)}^{-1}$. The cyclomatic number of a graph is the smallest number of edges whose removal makes the graph acyclic. A connected graph of maximum degree at most $4$ is known as a molecular graph. The primary motivation of the present study comes from a conjecture concerning the minimum DSO index of fixed-order connected graphs with cyclomatic number $3$, posed in the recent paper [F. Movahedi, I. Gutman, I. Redžepović, B. Furtula, Diminished Sombor index, MATCH Commun. Comput. Chem. 95 (2026) 141–162]. The present paper gives all graphs minimizing the DSO index among all molecular graphs of order $n$ with cyclomatic number $\mathrm{\ell }$, provided that $n\ge 2(\mathrm{\ell }-1)\ge 4$.