Extremal cacti with respect to Sombor index

Abstract: Recently, a novel topological index, Sombor index, was introduced by Gutman, defined as $SO(G)=\sum\limits_{uv\in E(G)}\sqrt{d_{u}^{2}+d_{v}^{2}}$, where $d_{u}$ denotes the degree of vertex $u$. In this paper, we first determine the maximum Sombor index among cacti with $n$ vertices and $t$ cycles, then determine the maximum Sombor index among cacti with perfect matchings. We also characterize corresponding maximum cacti.