Algebraic connectivity of weighted trees under perturbation

We investigate how the algebraic connectivity of a weighted tree behaves when the tree is perturbed by removing one of its branches and replacing it with another. This leads to a number of results, for example the facts that replacing a branch in an unweighted tree by a star on the same number of vertices will not decrease the algebraic connectivity, while replacing a certain branch by a path on the same number of vertices will not increase the algebraic connectivity. We also discuss how the arrangement of the weights on the edges of a tree affects the algebraic connectivity, and we produce a lower bound on the algebraic connectivity of any unweighted graph in terms of the diameter and the number of vertices. Throughout, our techniques exploit a connection between the algebraic connectivity of a weighted tree and certain positive matrices associated with the tree.