Multicenter Wiener indices and their applications

The Wiener index  W  could be viewed as a molecular structure des­ criptor composed of increments representing interactions between pairs of atoms.  A generalization of the  W  are the Steiner–Wiener indices  W k ,  k  = 3, 4, … In the quantity,  W k   interactions between  k -tuples of atoms play a role, based on the concept of the Steiner distance. It is shown that the term  W  +  l W k  provides an approximation for the boiling points of alkanes better than  W  itself. The best such approximation is obtained for  k  = 7.