On weighted spectral radius of unraveled balls and normalized Laplacian eigenvalues

For a graph G, the unraveled ball of radius r centered at a vertex v is the ball of radius r centered at v in the universal cover of G. We obtain a lower bound on the weighted spectral radius of unraveled balls of fixed radius in a graph with positive weights on edges, which is used to present an upper bound on the $s^{\text{th}}$ (where $s\ge 2$) smallest normalized Laplacian eigenvalue of irregular graphs under minor assumptions. Moreover, when $s=2$, the result may be regarded as an Alon–Boppana type bound for a class of irregular graphs.