Bounds on the eigenvalues of graphs with cut vertices or edges

In this paper, we characterize the extremal graph having the maximal Laplacian spectral radius among the connected bipartite graphs with n vertices and k cut vertices, and describe the extremal graph having the minimal least eigenvalue of the adjacency matrices of all the connected graphs with n vertices and k cut edges. We also present lower bounds on the least eigenvalue in terms of the number of cut vertices or cut edges and upper bounds on the Laplacian spectral radius in terms of the number of cut vertices.     

Eigenvalue bracketing for discrete and metric graphs

We develop eigenvalue estimates for the Laplacians on discrete and metric graphs using various types of boundary conditions at the vertices of the metric graph. Via an explicit correspondence of the equilateral metric and discrete graph spectrum (also in the “exceptional” values of the metric graph corresponding to the Dirichlet spectrum) we carry over these estimates from the metric graph Laplacian to the discrete case. We apply the results to covering graphs and present examples where the covering graph Laplacians have spectral gaps.     

Bounds on Special Subsets in Graphs, Eigenvalues and Association Schemes

We give a bound on the sizes of two sets of vertices at a given minimum distance in a graph in terms of polynomials and the Laplace spectrum of the graph. We obtain explicit bounds on the number of vertices at maximal distance and distance two from a given vertex, and on the size of two equally large sets at maximal distance. For graphs with four eigenvalues we find bounds on the number of vertices that are not adjacent to a given vertex and that have µ common neighbours with that vertex. Furthermore we find that the regular graphs for which the bounds are tight come from association schemes.     

Dynamical systems on graphs through the signless Laplacian matrix

There is a deep and interesting connection between the topological properties of a graph and the behaviour of the dynamical system defined on it. We analyse various kind of graphs, with different contrasting connectivity or degree characteristics, using the signless Laplacian matrix. We expose the theoretical results about the eigenvalue of the matrix and how they are related to the dynamical system. Then, we perform numerical computations on real-like graphs and observe the resulting system. Comparing the theoretical and numerical results, we found a perfect consistency. Furthermore, we define a metric which takes into account the “rigidity” of the graph and enables us to relate all together the topological properties of the graph, the signless Laplacian matrix and the dynamical system.     

On quasi-strongly regular graphs

We study the quasi-strongly regular graphs, which are a combinatorial generalization of the strongly regular and the distance regular graphs. Our main focus is on quasi-strongly regular graphs of grade 2. We prove a “spectral gap”-type result for them which generalizes Seidel's well-known formula for the eigenvalues of a strongly regular graph. We also obtain a number of necessary conditions for the feasibility of parameter sets and some structural results. We propose the heuristic principle that the quasi-strongly regular graphs can be viewed as a “lower-order approximation” to the distance regular graphs. This idea is illustrated by extending a known result from the distance-regular case to the quasi-strongly regular case. Along these lines, we propose a number of conjectures and open problems. Finally, we list the all the proper connected quasi-strongly graphs of grade 2 with up to 12 vertices.     

The Laplacian spread of graphs

The Laplacian spread of a graph is defined as the difference between the largest and second smallest eigenvalues of the Laplacian matrix of the graph. In this paper, bounds are obtained for the Laplacian spread of graphs. By the Laplacian spread, several upper bounds of the Nordhaus-Gaddum type of Laplacian eigenvalues are improved. Some operations on Laplacian spread are presented. Connected c-cyclic graphs with n vertices and Laplacian spread n − 1 are discussed.     

Eigenvalues and diameter

Let G be a connected graph of order n. The diameter of a graph is the maximum distance between any two vertices of G. In this paper, we will give some bounds on the diameter of G in terms of eigenvalues of adjacency matrix and Laplacian matrix, respectively.     

The bondage number of graphs on topological surfaces and Teschner’s conjecture

The bondage number of a graph is the smallest number of its edges whose removal results in a graph having a larger domination number. We provide constant upper bounds for the bondage number of graphs on topological surfaces, and improve upper bounds for the bondage number in terms of the maximum vertex degree and the orientable and non-orientable genera of graphs. Also, we present stronger upper bounds for graphs with no triangles and graphs with the number of vertices larger than a certain threshold in terms of graph genera. This settles Teschner’s Conjecture in affirmative for almost all graphs. As an auxiliary result, we show tight lower bounds for the number of vertices of graphs 2-cell embeddable on topological surfaces of a given genus.     

Mean Curvature,Threshold Dynamics,and Phase Field Theory on Finite Graphs

In the continuum, close connections exist between mean curvature flow, the Allen-Cahn (AC) partial differential equation, and the Merriman-Bence-Osher (MBO) threshold dynamics scheme. Graph analogues of these processes have recently seen a rise in popularity as relaxations of NP-complete combinatorial problems, which demands deeper theoretical underpinnings of the graph processes. The aim of this paper is to introduce these graph processes in the light of their continuum counterparts, provide some background, prove the first results connecting them, illustrate these processes with examples and identify open questions for future study. We derive a graph curvature from the graph cut function, the natural graph counterpart of total variation (perimeter). This derivation and the resulting curvature definition differ from those in earlier literature, where the continuum mean curvature is simply discretized, and bears many similarities to the continuum nonlocal curvature or nonlocal means formulation. This new graph curvature is not only relevant for graph MBO dynamics, but also appears in the variational formulation of a discrete time graph mean curvature flow. We prove estimates showing that the dynamics are trivial for both MBO and AC evolutions if the parameters (the time-step and diffuse interface scale, respectively) are sufficiently small (a phenomenon known as “freezing” or “pinning”) and also that the dynamics for MBO are nontrivial if the time step is large enough. These bounds are in terms of graph quantities such as the spectrum of the graph Laplacian and the graph curvature. Adapting a Lyapunov functional for the continuum MBO scheme to graphs, we prove that the graph MBO scheme converges to a stationary state in a finite number of iterations. Variations on this scheme have recently become popular in the literature as ways to minimize (continuum) nonlocal total variation.     

Oriented bipartite graphs and the Goldbach graph

In this paper, we study oriented bipartite graphs. In particular, we introduce “bitransitive” graphs. Several characterizations of bitransitive bitournaments are obtained. We show that bitransitive bitounaments are equivalent to acyclic bitournaments. As applications, we characterize acyclic bitournaments with Hamiltonian paths, determine the number of non-isomorphic acyclic bitournaments of a given order, and solve the graph-isomorphism problem in linear time for acyclic bitournaments. Next, we prove the well-known Caccetta-Häggkvist Conjecture for oriented bipartite graphs in some cases for which it is unsolved, in general, for oriented graphs. We also introduce the concept of undirected as well as oriented “odd-even” graphs. We characterize bipartite graphs and acyclic oriented bipartite graphs in terms of them. In fact, we show that any bipartite graph (acyclic oriented bipartite graph) can be represented by some odd-even graph (oriented odd-even graph). We obtain some conditions for connectedness of odd-even graphs. This study of odd-even graphs and their connectedness is motivated by a special family of odd-even graphs which we call “Goldbach graphs”. We show that the famous Goldbach's conjecture is equivalent to the connectedness of Goldbach graphs. Several other number theoretic conjectures (e.g., the twin prime conjecture) are related to various parameters of Goldbach graphs, motivating us to study the nature of vertex-degrees and independent sets of these graphs. Finally, we observe Hamiltonian properties of some odd-even graphs related to Goldbach graphs for a small number of vertices.     

Distance–regular graphs having the M-property

We analyse when the Moore–Penrose inverse of the combinatorial Laplacian of a distance–regular graph is an M-matrix; that is, it has non-positive off-diagonal elements or, equivalently when the Moore–Penrose inverse of the combinatorial Laplacian of a distance–regular graph is also the combinatorial Laplacian of another network. When this occurs we say that the distance–regular graph has the M-property. We prove that only distance–regular graphs with diameter up to three can have the M-property and we give a characterization of the graphs that satisfy the M-property in terms of their intersection array. Moreover, we exhaustively analyse strongly regular graphs having the M-property and we give some families of distance–regular graphs with diameter three that satisfy the M-property. Roughly speaking, we prove that all distance–regular graphs with diameter one; about half of the strongly regular graphs; only some imprimitive distance–regular graphs with diameter three, and no distance–regular graphs with diameter greater than three, have the M-property. In addition, we conjecture that no primitive distance–regular graph with diameter three has the M-property.     

Commute times for a directed graph using an asymmetric Laplacian

The expected commute times for a strongly connected directed graph are related to an asymmetric Laplacian matrix as a direct extension to similar well known formulas for undirected graphs. We show the close relationships between the asymmetric Laplacian and the so-called Fundamental matrix. We give bounds for the commute times in terms of the stationary probabilities for a random walk over the graph together with the asymmetric Laplacian and show how this can be approximated by a symmetrized Laplacian derived from a related weighted undirected graph.     

Ollivier’s Ricci Curvature,Local Clustering and Curvature-Dimension Inequalities on Graphs

In this paper, we explore the relationship between one of the most elementary and important properties of graphs, the presence and relative frequency of triangles, and a combinatorial notion of Ricci curvature. We employ a definition of generalized Ricci curvature proposed by Ollivier in a general framework of Markov processes and metric spaces and applied in graph theory by Lin–Yau. In analogy with curvature notions in Riemannian geometry, we interpret this Ricci curvature as a control on the amount of overlap between neighborhoods of two neighboring vertices. It is therefore naturally related to the presence of triangles containing those vertices, or more precisely, the local clustering coefficient, that is, the relative proportion of connected neighbors among all the neighbors of a vertex. This suggests to derive lower Ricci curvature bounds on graphs in terms of such local clustering coefficients. We also study curvature-dimension inequalities on graphs, building upon previous work of several authors.     

Some results on the Laplacian eigenvalues of unicyclic graphs

In this paper, we provide the smallest value of the second largest Laplacian eigenvalue for any unicyclic graph, and find the unicyclic graphs attaining that value. And also give an “asymptotically good” upper bounds for the second largest Laplacian eigenvalues of unicyclic graphs. Using this results, we can determine unicyclic graphs with maximum Laplacian separator. And unicyclic graphs with maximum Laplacian spread will also be determined.     

Metric Uniformization and Spectral Bounds for Graphs

We present a method for proving upper bounds on the eigenvalues of the graph Laplacian. A main step involves choosing an appropriate “Riemannian” metric to uniformize the geometry of the graph. In many interesting cases, the existence of such a metric is shown by examining the combinatorics of special types of flows. This involves proving new inequalities on the crossing number of graphs.     

Constructably Laplacian integral graphs

A graph is Laplacian integral if the spectrum of its Laplacian matrix consists entirely of integers. We consider the class of constructably Laplacian integral graphs - those graphs that be constructed from an empty graph by adding a sequence of edges in such a way that each time a new edge is added, the resulting graph is Laplacian integral. We characterize the constructably Laplacian integral graphs in terms of certain forbidden vertex-induced subgraphs, and consider the number of nonisomorphic Laplacian integral graphs that can be constructed by adding a suitable edge to a constructably Laplacian integral graph. We also discuss the eigenvalues of constructably Laplacian integral graphs, and identify families of isospectral nonisomorphic graphs within the class.     

Block spectral clustering methods for multiple graphs

In data science, data are often represented by using an undirected graph where vertices represent objects and edges describe a relationship between two objects. In many applications, there can be many relations arising from different sources and/or different types of models. Clustering of multiple undirected graphs over the same set of vertices can be studied. Existing clustering methods of multiple graphs involve costly optimization and/or tensor computation. In this paper, we study block spectral clustering methods for these multiple graphs. The main contribution of this paper is to propose and construct block Laplacian matrices for clustering of multiple graphs. We present a novel variant of the Laplacian matrix called the block intra‐normalized Laplacian and prove the conditions required for zero eigenvalues in this variant. We also show that eigenvectors of the constructed block Laplacian matrix can be shown to be solutions of the relaxation of multiple graphs cut problems, and the lower and upper bounds of the optimal solutions of multiple graphs cut problems can also be established. Experimental results are given to demonstrate that the clustering accuracy and the computational time of the proposed method are better than those of tested clustering methods for multiple graphs.     

On weighted directed graphs

The study of a mixed graph and its Laplacian matrix have gained quite a bit of interest among the researchers. Mixed graphs are very important for the study of graph theory as they provide a setup where one can have directed and undirected edges in the graph. In this article we present a more general structure, namely the weighted directed graphs and supply appropriate generalizations of several existing results for mixed graphs related to singularity of the corresponding Laplacian matrix. We also prove many new combinatorial results relating the Laplacian matrix and the graph structure.     

On the Laplacian Eigenvalues and Metric Parameters of Hypergraphs

The aim of this paper is to generalize some concepts and recent results of the algebraic graph theory in order to investigate and describe, by algebraic methods, the properties of some combinatorial structures. Here we introduce a version of "Laplacian matrix" of a hypergraph and we obtain several spectral-like results on its metric parameters, such as the diameter, mean distance, excess, bandwidth and cutsets.     

Unoriented Laplacian maximizing graphs are degree maximal

A connected graph is said to be unoriented Laplacian maximizing if the spectral radius of its unoriented Laplacian matrix attains the maximum among all connected graphs with the same number of vertices and the same number of edges. A graph is said to be threshold (maximal) if its degree sequence is not majorized by the degree sequence of any other graph (and, in addition, the graph is connected). It is proved that an unoriented Laplacian maximizing graph is maximal and also that there are precisely two unoriented Laplacian maximizing graphs of a given order and with nullity 3. Our treatment depends on the following known characterization: a graph G is threshold (maximal) if and only if for every pair of vertices u,v of G, the sets N(u)?{v},N(v)?{u}, where N(u) denotes the neighbor set of u in G, are comparable with respect to the inclusion relation (and, in addition, the graph is connected). A conjecture about graphs that maximize the unoriented Laplacian matrix among all graphs with the same number of vertices and the same number of edges is also posed.