  Several indices that measure the degree of balance of a rooted phylogenetic
tree have been proposed so far in the literature. In this work we define and
study a new index of this kind, which we call the total cophenetic index: the
sum, over all pairs of different leaves, of the depth of their least common
ancestor. This index makes sense for arbitrary trees, can be computed in linear
time and it has a larger range of values and a greater resolution power than
other indices like Colless' or Sackin's. We compute its maximum and minimum
values for arbitrary and binary trees, as well as exact formulas for its
expected value for binary trees under the Yule and the uniform models of
evolution. As a byproduct of this study, we obtain an exact formula for the
expected value of the Sackin index under the uniform model, a result that seems
to be new in the literature.
