In chemical graph theory and in mathematical chemistry, a molecular graph or chemical graph is a representation of the structural formula of a chemical compound in terms of graph theory. A chemical graph is a labeled graph whose vertices correspond to the atoms of the compound and edges correspond to chemical bonds. Its vertices are labeled with the kinds of the corresponding atoms and edges are labeled with the types of bonds.[1] For particular purposes any of the labelings may be ignored.
A hydrogen-depleted molecular graph or hydrogen-suppressed molecular graph is the molecular graph with hydrogen vertices deleted.
In some important cases (topological index calculation etc.) the following classical definition is sufficient: a molecular graph is a connected, undirected graph which admits a one-to-one correspondence with the structural formula of a chemical compound in which the vertices of the graph correspond to atoms of the molecule and edges of the graph correspond to chemical bonds between these atoms.[2] One variant is to represent materials as infinite Euclidean graphs, in particular, crystals as periodic graphs.[3]