The determinants of q-distance matrices of trees and two quantities relating to permutations

In this paper we prove that two quantities relating to the length of permutations defined on trees are independent of the structures of trees. We also find that these results are closely related to the results obtained by Graham and Pollak [R.L. Graham, H.O. Pollak, On the addressing problem for loop switching, Bell System Tech. J. 50 (1971) 2495–2519] and by Bapat, Kirkland, and Neumann [R. Bapat, S.J. Kirkland, M. Neumann, On distance matrices and Laplacians, Linear Algebra Appl. 401 (2005) 193–209].