A FURTHER GENERALIZATION OF JUNG'S THEOREM

Let G be a graph of order n. We define the distance between two vertices u andv in G, denoted by d(u, v), as the minimum value of the lengths of all u-v paths. We writeσ(G)=min{∑=1~k d(v)|{v, v,…, v} is an independent set in G} and NC2(G)=min {|N(u)∪N(v)| | d(u, v)=2}. We denote by ω(G) the number of components of agraph G. A graph G is called 1-tough if ω(G\S)≤|S| for every subset S of V(G) withω(G\S)>l. By c(G) we denote the length of the longest cycle in G; in particular, G iscalled a Hamiltonian graph if c(G)=n. H.A. Jung proved that every 1-tough graphwith order n≥11 and σ2≥n-4 is Hamiltonian. We generalize it further as follows: ifG is a 1-tough graph and σ3(G)≥n, then c(G)≥min {n,2NC2(G)+4}. Thus, theconjecture of D. Bauer, G. Fan and H.J. Veldman in [2] is completely solved.