Spectra of lifted Ramanujan graphs

A random n-lift of a base-graph G is its cover graph H on the vertices n]×V(G), where for each edge uv in G there is an independent uniform bijection π, and H has all edges of the form (i,u),(π(i),v). A main motivation for studying lifts is understanding Ramanujan graphs, and namely whether typical covers of such a graph are also Ramanujan.Let G be a graph with largest eigenvalue λ₁ and let ρ be the spectral radius of its universal cover. Friedman (2003) 12] proved that every “new” eigenvalue of a random lift of G is with high probability, and conjectured a bound of ρ+o(1), which would be tight by results of Lubotzky and Greenberg (1995) 15]. Linial and Puder (2010) 17] improved Friedman?s bound to . For d-regular graphs, where λ₁=d and , this translates to a bound of O(d2/3), compared to the conjectured .Here we analyze the spectrum of a random n-lift of a d-regular graph whose nontrivial eigenvalues are all at most λ in absolute value. We show that with high probability the absolute value of every nontrivial eigenvalue of the lift is . This result is tight up to a logarithmic factor, and for λ?d2/3−ε it substantially improves the above upper bounds of Friedman and of Linial and Puder. In particular, it implies that a typical n-lift of a Ramanujan graph is nearly Ramanujan.