Spectral graph

theory

In mathematics, spectral graph theory is

the study of the properties of a graph in
relationship to the characteristic
polynomial, eigenvalues, and eigenvectors
of matrices associated with the graph,
such as its adjacency matrix or Laplacian
matrix.
The adjacency matrix of a simple graph is
a real symmetric matrix and is therefore
orthogonally diagonalizable; its
eigenvalues are real algebraic integers.

While the adjacency matrix depends on

the vertex labeling, its spectrum is a graph
invariant, although not a complete one.

Spectral graph theory is also concerned

with graph parameters that are defined via
multiplicities of eigenvalues of matrices
associated to the graph, such as the Colin
de Verdière number.

Cospectral graphs
Two graphs are called cospectral or
isospectral if the adjacency matrices of
the graphs have equal multisets of
eigenvalues.

Two cospectral enneahedra, the smallest possible

cospectral polyhedral graphs

Cospectral graphs need not be isomorphic,

but isomorphic graphs are always
cospectral.
Graphs determined by their …

spectrum

A graph is said to be determined by its

spectrum if any other graph with the same
spectrum as is isomorphic to .

Some first examples of families of graphs

that are determined by their spectrum
include:

The complete graphs.

The finite starlike trees.

Cospectral mates …

A pair of graphs are said to be cospectral

mates if they have the same spectrum, but
are non-isomorphic.

The smallest pair of cospectral mates is

{K1,4, C4 U K1}, comprising the 5-vertex star
and the graph union of the 4-vertex cycle
and the single-vertex graph, as reported by
Collatz and Sinogowitz[1][2] in 1957.

The smallest pair of polyhedral cospectral

mates are enneahedra with eight vertices
each.[3]

Finding cospectral graphs …

Almost all trees are cospectral, i.e., as the

number of vertices grows, the fraction of
trees for which there exists a cospectral
tree goes to 1.[4]

A pair of regular graphs are cospectral if

and only if their complements are
cospectral.[5]

A pair of distance-regular graphs are

cospectral if and only if they have the
same intersection array.

Cospectral graphs can also be constructed

by means of the Sunada method.[6]

Another important source of cospectral

graphs are the point-collinearity graphs
and the line-intersection graphs of point-
line geometries. These graphs are always
cospectral but are often non-isomorphic.[7]

Cheeger inequality
The famous Cheeger's inequality from
Riemannian geometry has a discrete
analogue involving the Laplacian matrix;
this is perhaps the most important
theorem in spectral graph theory and one
of the most useful facts in algorithmic
applications. It approximates the sparsest
cut of a graph through the second
eigenvalue of its Laplacian.

Cheeger constant …
The Cheeger constant (also Cheeger
number or isoperimetric number) of a
graph is a numerical measure of whether
or not a graph has a "bottleneck". The
Cheeger constant as a measure of
"bottleneckedness" is of great interest in
many areas: for example, constructing
well-connected networks of computers,
card shuffling, and low-dimensional
topology (in particular, the study of
hyperbolic 3-manifolds).

More formally, the Cheeger constant h(G)

of a graph G on n vertices is defined as
where the minimum is over all nonempty
sets S of at most n/2 vertices and ∂(S) is
the edge boundary of S, i.e., the set of
edges with exactly one endpoint in S.[8]

Cheeger inequality …

When the graph G is d-regular, there is a

relationship between h(G) and the spectral
gap d − λ2 of G. An inequality due to
Dodziuk[9] and independently Alon and
Milman[10] states that[11]
This inequality is closely related to the
Cheeger bound for Markov chains and can
be seen as a discrete version of Cheeger's
inequality in Riemannian geometry.

Hoffman-Delsarte inequality
There is an eigenvalue bound for
independent sets in regular graphs,
originally due to Alan J. Hoffman and
Philippe Delsarte.[12]

Suppose that is a -regular graph on

vertices with least eigenvalue . Then:
where denotes its independence
number.

This bound has been applied to establish

e.g. algebraic proofs of the Erdős–Ko–
Rado theorem and its analogue for
intersecting families of subspaces over
finite fields.[13]

Historical outline
Spectral graph theory emerged in the
1950s and 1960s. Besides graph theoretic
research on the relationship between
structural and spectral properties of
graphs, another major source was
research in quantum chemistry, but the
connections between these two lines of
work were not discovered until much
later.[14] The 1980 monograph Spectra of
Graphs[15] by Cvetković, Doob, and Sachs
summarised nearly all research to date in
the area. In 1988 it was updated by the
survey Recent Results in the Theory of
Graph Spectra.[16] The 3rd edition of
Spectra of Graphs (1995) contains a
summary of the further recent
contributions to the subject.[14] Discrete
geometric analysis created and developed
by Toshikazu Sunada in the 2000s deals
with spectral graph theory in terms of
discrete Laplacians associated with
weighted graphs,[17] and finds application
in various fields, including shape analysis.
In most recent years, the spectral graph
theory has expanded to vertex-varying
graphs often encountered in many real-life
applications.[18][19][20][21]

See also
Strongly regular graph
Algebraic connectivity
Algebraic graph theory
Spectral clustering
Spectral shape analysis
 Estrada index
Lovász theta
Expander graph

References
1. Collatz, L. and Sinogowitz, U.
"Spektren endlicher Grafen." Abh.
Math. Sem. Univ. Hamburg 21, 63–77,
1957.
2. Weisstein, Eric W. "Cospectral
Graphs" . MathWorld.
3. Hosoya, Haruo; Nagashima, Umpei;
Hyugaji, Sachiko (1994), "Topological
twin graphs. Smallest pair of
isospectral polyhedral graphs with
eight vertices", Journal of Chemical
Information and Modeling, 34 (2):
428–431, doi:10.1021/ci00018a033 .
4. Schwenk (1973), pp. 275-307.
5. Godsil, Chris (November 7, 2007). "Are
Almost All Graphs Cospectral?" (PDF).
6. Sunada, Toshikazu (1985),
"Riemannian coverings and isospectral
manifolds", Ann. of Math., 121 (1):
169–186, doi:10.2307/1971195 ,
JSTOR 1971195 .
 7. See (Brouwer & Haemers 2011) in the
external links.
8. Definition 2.1 in Hoory, Linial &
Widgerson (2006)
9. J.Dodziuk, Difference Equations,
Isoperimetric inequality and
Transience of Certain Random Walks,
Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 284 (1984),
no. 2, 787-794.
10. Alon & Spencer 2011.
11. Theorem 2.4 in Hoory, Linial &
Widgerson (2006)
12. Godsil, Chris (May 2009). "Erdős-Ko-
Rado Theorems" (PDF).
13. 1949-, Godsil, C. D. (Christopher David)
(2016). Erdős-Ko-Rado theorems :
algebraic approaches. Meagher, Karen
(College teacher). Cambridge, United
Kingdom. ISBN 9781107128446.
OCLC 935456305 .
14. Eigenspaces of Graphs, by Dragoš
Cvetković, Peter Rowlinson, Slobodan
Simić (1997) ISBN 0-521-57352-1
15. Dragoš M. Cvetković, Michael Doob,
Horst Sachs, Spectra of Graphs (1980)
16. Cvetković, Dragoš M.; Doob, Michael;
Gutman, Ivan; Torgasev, A. (1988).
Recent Results in the Theory of Graph
Spectra . Annals of Discrete
mathematics. ISBN 0-444-70361-6.
17. Sunada, Toshikazu (2008), "Discrete
geometric analysis", Proceedings of
Symposia in Pure Mathematics, 77:
51–86,
doi:10.1090/pspum/077/2459864 ,
ISBN 9780821844717.
18. Shuman, David I; Ricaud, Benjamin;
Vandergheynst, Pierre (March 2016).
"Vertex-frequency analysis on graphs".
Applied and Computational Harmonic
Analysis. 40 (2): 260–291.
arXiv:1307.5708 .
doi:10.1016/j.acha.2015.02.005 .
ISSN 1063-5203 .
19. Stankovic, Ljubisa; Dakovic, Milos;
Sejdic, Ervin (July 2017). "Vertex-
Frequency Analysis: A Way to Localize
Graph Spectral Components [Lecture
Notes]". IEEE Signal Processing
Magazine. 34 (4): 176–182.
Bibcode:2017ISPM...34..176S .
doi:10.1109/msp.2017.2696572 .
ISSN 1053-5888 .
20. Sakiyama, Akie; Watanabe, Kana;
Tanaka, Yuichi (September 2016).
"Spectral Graph Wavelets and Filter
Banks With Low Approximation Error".
IEEE Transactions on Signal and
Information Processing over
Networks. 2 (3): 230–245.
doi:10.1109/tsipn.2016.2581303 .
ISSN 2373-776X .
21. Behjat, Hamid; Richter, Ulrike; Van De
Ville, Dimitri; Sornmo, Leif (2016-11-
15). "Signal-Adapted Tight Frames on
Graphs" . IEEE Transactions on Signal
Processing. 64 (22): 6017–6029.
Bibcode:2016ITSP...64.6017B .
doi:10.1109/tsp.2016.2591513 .
ISSN 1053-587X .
Schwenk, A. J. (1973). "Almost All Trees
are Cospectral". In Harary, Frank (ed.).
New Directions in the Theory of Graphs.
New York: Academic Press.
ISBN 012324255X. OCLC 890297242 .

Further reading
 Chung, Fan (1997). American
Mathematical Society (ed.). Spectral
Graph Theory . Providence, R. I.
ISBN 0821803158. MR 1421568 [first 4
chapters are available in the website]

External links
Brouwer, Andries; Haemers, Willem H.
(2011). "Spectra of Graphs" (PDF).
Spielman, Daniel (2011). "Spectral Graph
Theory" (PDF). [chapter from
Combinatorial Scientific Computing]
Spielman, Daniel (2007). "Spectral Graph
Theory and its Applications" . [presented
at FOCS 2007 Conference]
 Spielman, Daniel (2004). "Spectral Graph
Theory and its Applications" . [course
page and lecture notes]

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