We study the second largest spectral gap from $1$ of the normalized Laplacian of a graph, a quantity that appears in the literature in connection with random walks, expander graphs, and Ramanujan graphs. We relate it to the classical Cheeger and dual Cheeger constants, and we introduce a new Cheeger-type constant admitting a probabilistic interpretation in terms of two-step random walks. For this constant, we establish sharp inequalities analogous to the classical Cheeger inequalities.
We use the concept of intrinsic metrics to give a new definition for an isoperimetric constant of a graph. We use this novel isoperimetric constant to prove a Cheeger-type estimate for the bottom of the spectrum which is nontrivial even if the vertex degrees are unbounded.
We discuss a Cheeger constant as a mixture of the frustration index and the expansion rate, and prove the related Cheeger inequalities and higher order Cheeger inequalities for graph Laplacians with cyclic signatures, discrete magnetic Laplacians on finite graphs and magnetic Laplacians on closed Riemannian manifolds. In this process, we develop spectral clustering algorithms for partially oriented graphs and multi-way spectral clustering algorithms via metrics in lens spaces and complex projective spaces. As a byproduct, we give a unified viewpoint of Harary's structural balance theory of sig…
The O(d) Synchronization problem consists of estimating a set of unknown orthogonal transformations O_i from noisy measurements of a subset of the pairwise ratios O_iO_j^{-1}. We formulate and prove a Cheeger-type inequality that relates a measure of how well it is possible to solve the O(d) synchronization problem with the spectra of an operator, the graph Connection Laplacian. We also show how this inequality provides a worst case performance guarantee for a spectral method to solve this problem.
For any subgraph of a graph, the Laplacian with Neumann boundary condition was introduced by Chung and Yau [CY94]. In this paper, motivated by the Riemannian case, we introduce the Cheeger constants for Neumann problems and prove corresponding Cheeger estimates for first nontrivial eigenvalues.
In this paper, we study eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of $p$-Laplacians with Dirichlet boundary condition on graphs. We characterize the first eigenfunction (and the maximum eigenfunction for a bipartite graph) via the sign condition. By the uniqueness of the first eigenfunction of $p$-Laplacian, as $p\to 1,$ we identify the Cheeger constant of a symmetric graph with that of the quotient graph. By this approach, we calculate various Cheeger constants of spherically symmetric graphs.
The graph Cheeger constant and Cheeger inequalities are generalized to the case of hypergraphs whose edges have the same cardinality. In particular, it is shown that the second largest eigenvalue of the generalized normalized Laplacian is bounded both above and below by the generalized Cheeger constant, and the corresponding eigenfunctions can be used to approximate the Cheeger cut.
We prove Cheeger inequalities for p-Laplacians on finite and infinite weighted graphs. Unlike in previous works, we do not impose boundedness of the vertex degree, nor do we restrict ourselves to the normalized Laplacian and, more generally, we do not impose any boundedness assumption on the geometry. This is achieved by a novel definition of the measure of the boundary which is using the idea of intrinsic metrics. For the non-normalized case, our bounds on the spectral gap of p-Laplacians are already significantly better for finite graphs and for infinite graphs they yield non-trivial bounds …
We define a new Cheeger-like constant for graphs and we use it for proving Cheeger-like inequalities that bound the largest eigenvalue of the normalized Laplace operator.
We study the eigenvalues of the connection Laplacian on a graph with an orthogonal group or unitary group signature. We establish higher order Buser type inequalities, i.e., we provide upper bounds for eigenvalues in terms of Cheeger constants in the case of nonnegative Ricci curvature. In this process, we discuss the concepts of Cheeger type constants and a discrete Ricci curvature for connection Laplacians and study their properties systematically. The Cheeger constants are defined as mixtures of the expansion rate of the underlying graph and the frustration index of the signature. The discr…
We introduce the signless 1-Laplacians and the dual Cheeger constants on simplicial complexes. The connection of its spectrum to the combinatorial properties like independence number, chromatic number and dual Cheeger constant is investigated. Our estimates can be comparable to Hoffman's bounds in virtue of Laplacian on simplicial complexes. An interesting inequality relating multiplicity of the largest eigenvalue, independence number and chromatic number are provided, which could be regarded as a variant version of Lovasz sandwich theorem. Also, the behavior of the operator under the topologi…
Given a graph with a designated set of boundary vertices, we define a new notion of a Neumann Laplace operator on a graph using a reflection principle. We show that the first eigenvalue of this Neumann graph Laplacian satisfies a Cheeger inequality.
For graphs there exists a strong connection between spectral and combinatorial expansion properties. This is expressed, e.g., by the discrete Cheeger inequality, the lower bound of which states that $λ(G) \leq h(G)$, where $λ(G)$ is the second smallest eigenvalue of the Laplacian of a graph $G$ and $h(G)$ is the Cheeger constant measuring the edge expansion of $G$. We are interested in generalizations of expansion properties to finite simplicial complexes of higher dimension (or uniform hypergraphs). Whereas higher dimensional Laplacians were introduced already in 1945 by Eckmann, the generali…
We extend the definition of boundary expansion to CW complexes and prove a Cheeger-Buser-type relation between the spectral gap of the Laplacian and the boundary expansion of an orientable CW complex.
We introduce a set of multi-way dual Cheeger constants and prove universal higher-order dual Cheeger inequalities for eigenvalues of normalized Laplace operators on weighted finite graphs. Our proof proposes a new spectral clustering phenomenon deduced from metrics on real projective spaces. We further extend those results to a general reversible Markov operator and find applications in characterizing its essential spectrum.
In \cite{Elek} we proved that the limit of a weakly convergent sequence of finite graphs can be viewed as a graphing or a continuous field of infinite graphs. Thus one can associate a type $II_1$-von Neumann algebra to such graph sequences. We show that in this case the integrated density of states exists that is the weak limit of the spectra of the graph Laplacians of the finite graphs is the KNS-spectral measure of the graph Laplacian of the limit graphing. Using this limit technique we prove a Cheeger type inequality for finite graphs.
In this paper we present new L-borderenergetic graphs, this is, graphs which are L-noncospectral with Kn but have the same Laplacian energy. We also present some graphs which are noncospectral to respective normalized Laplacian energy and they have the same normalized Laplacian energy.
The spectral theory of the normalized Laplacian for chemical hypergraphs is further investigated. The signless normalized Laplacian is introduced and it is shown that its spectrum for classical hypergraphs coincides with the spectrum of the normalized Laplacian for bipartite chemical hypergraphs. Furthermore, the spectra of special families of hypergraphs are established.
In this paper, we determine the two normalized Laplacian spectrum of generalized subdivision- vertex corona, subdivision-edge corona for a connected regular graph with an arbitrary reg- ular graph in terms of their normalized Laplacian eigenvalues. Moreover, applying these results, we find some non-regular normaliaed Laplacian cospectral graphs. These results generalize the existing results in [11].
Given an undirected graph $G$, the classical Cheeger constant, $h_G$, measures the optimal partition of the vertices into 2 parts with relatively few edges between them based upon the sizes of the parts. The well-known Cheeger's inequality states that $2 λ_1 \le h_G \le \sqrt {2 λ_1}$ where $λ_1$ is the minimum nontrivial eigenvalue of the normalized Laplacian matrix. Recent work has generalized the concept of the Cheeger constant when partitioning the vertices of a graph into $k > 2$ parts. While there are several approaches, recent results have shown these higher-order Cheeger constants to b…
Several new spectral properties of the normalized Laplacian defined for oriented hypergraphs are shown. The eigenvalue $1$ and the case of duplicate vertices are discussed; two Courant nodal domain theorems are established; new quantities that bound the eigenvalues are introduced. In particular, the Cheeger constant is generalized and it is shown that the classical Cheeger bounds can be generalized for some classes of hypergraphs; it is shown that a geometric quantity used to study zonotopes bounds the largest eigenvalue from below, and that the notion of coloring number can be generalized and…
The eigenvalues of the normalized Laplacian of a graph provide information on its topological and structural characteristics and also on some relevant dynamical aspects, specifically in relation to random walks. In this paper we determine the spectra of the normalized Laplacian of iterated triangulations of a generic simple connected graph. As an application, we also find closed-forms for their multiplicative degree-Kirchhoff index, Kemeny's constant and number of spanning trees.
Let $G$ be a simple graph of order $N$. The normalized Laplacian Estrada index of $G$ is defined as $NEE(G)=\sum_{i=1}^Ne^{λ_i}$, where $λ_1,λ_2,\cdots,λ_N$ are the normalized Laplacian eigenvalues of $G$. In this paper, we give a tight lower bound for $NEE$ of general graphs. We also calculate $NEE$ for a class of treelike fractals, which contain some classical chemical trees as special cases. It is shown that $NEE$ scales linearly with the order of the fractal, in line with a best possible lower bound for connected bipartite graphs.
The Cheeger constant of a graph is the smallest possible ratio between the size of a subgraph and the size of its boundary. It is well known that this constant must be at least $\frac{λ_1}{2}$, where $λ_1$ is the smallest positive eigenvalue of the Laplacian matrix. The subject of this paper is a conjecture of the authors that for distance-regular graphs the Cheeger constant is at most $λ_1$. In particular, we prove the conjecture for the known infinite families of distance-regular graphs, distance-regular graphs of diameter 2 (the strongly regular graphs), several classes of imprimitive dista…
We consider the normalized Laplace operator for directed graphs with positive and negative edge weights. This generalization of the normalized Laplace operator for undirected graphs is used to characterize directed acyclic graphs. Moreover, we identify certain structural properties of the underlying graph with extremal eigenvalues of the normalized Laplace operator. We prove comparison theorems that establish a relationship between the eigenvalues of directed graphs and certain undirected graphs. This relationship is used to derive eigenvalue estimates for directed graphs. Finally we introduce…
The study and calculation of spectrum of networks can be used to describe networks structure and quantify analysis of networks performance. The fractal Möbius octagonal networks, denoted by $Q_n$, is derived from the inverse identification of the opposite lateral edges of fractal linear octagonal networks. In this paper, the normalized Laplacian spectrum of $Q_n$ is determined by two matrices $\mathcal {L}_A$ and $\mathcal {L}_S$. As an important application of our results, some topological indices (multiplicative degree-Kirchhoff index, the number of spanning trees) formulas of $Q_n$ are obta…
Given a connected graph $G$, the toughness $τ_G$ is defined as the minimum value of the ratio $|S|/ω_{G-S}$, where $S$ ranges over all vertex cut sets of $G$, and $ω_{G-S}$ is the number of connected components in the subgraph $G-S$ obtained by deleting all vertices of $S$ from $G$. In this paper, we provide a lower bound for the toughness $τ_G$ in terms of the maximum degree, minimum degree and normalized Laplacian eigenvalues of $G$. This can be viewed as a slight generalization of Brouwer's toughness conjecture, which was confirmed by Gu (2021). Furthermore, we give a characterization of th…
We show that, in the graph spectrum of the normalized graph Laplacian on trees, the eigenvalue 1 and eigenvalues near 1 are strongly related to minimum vertex covers. In particular, for the eigenvalue 1, its multiplicity is related to the size of a minimum vertex cover, and zero entries of its eigenvectors correspond to vertices in minimum vertex covers; while for eigenvalues near 1, their distance to 1 can be estimated from minimum vertex covers; and for the largest eigenvalue smaller than 1, the sign graphs of its eigenvectors take vertices in a minimum vertex cover as representatives.
The expansion of a graph is typically associated with its spectral properties - testing whether a graph is an expander is usually done using Cheeger's inequality. One can also use multiple eigenvalues in a higher-order Cheeger's inequality to test a deeper set of properties on the graph. However Cheeger's inquality, and the higher-order Cheeger's inequality, can be imprecise tools. Recently Lee, Gharan, and Trevisan constructed the Noisy Hypercube to prove the sharpness of the gap between spectral expansion and edge expansion in the higher-order Cheeger's inequality. We are concerned with the …
The Cheeger constant, $h_G$, is a measure of expansion within a graph. The classical Cheeger Inequality states: $λ_{1}/2 \le h_G \le \sqrt{2 λ_{1}}$ where $λ_1$ is the first nontrivial eigenvalue of the normalized Laplacian matrix. Hence, $h_G$ is tightly controlled by $λ_1$ to within a quadratic factor. We give an alternative Cheeger Inequality where we consider the $\infty$-norm of the corresponding eigenvector in addition to $λ_1$. This inequality controls $h_G$ to within a linear factor of $λ_1$ thereby providing an improvement to the previous quadratic bounds. An additional advantage of o…
The $k$-parallel subdivision graph $S_k(G)$ is generated from $G$ which each edge of $G$ is replaced by $k$ parallel paths of length 2. The $2k$-parallel subdivision graph $S_{2k}(G)$ is constructed from $G$ which each edge of $G$ is replaced by $k$ parallel paths of length 3. In this paper, the normalized Laplacian spectra of $S_k(G)$ and $S_{2k}(G)$ are given. They turn out that the multiplicities of the corresponding eigenvalues are only determined by $k$. As applications, the expected hitting time, the expected commute time and any two-points resistance distance between vertices $i$ and $j…
In this paper, we characterize all connected graphs with exactly three distinct normalized Laplacian eigenvalues of which one is equal to $1$, determine all connected bipartite graphs with at least one vertex of degree $1$ having exactly four distinct normalized Laplacian eigenvalues, and find all unicyclic graphs with three or four distinct normalized Laplacian eigenvalues.
Cheeger inequalities bound the spectral gap $γ$ of a space by isoperimetric properties of that space and vice versa. In this paper, I derive Cheeger-type inequalities for nonpositive matrices (aka stoquastic Hamiltonians), real matrices, and Hermitian matrices. For matrices written $H = L+W$, where $L$ is either a combinatorial or normalized graph Laplacian, I show that: (1) when $W$ is diagonal and $L$ has maximum degree $d_{\max}$, $2h \geq γ\geq \sqrt{h^2 + d_{\max}^2}-d_\max$; (2) when $W$ is real, we can often route negative-weighted edges along positive-weighted edges such that the Cheeg…
In this paper, we obtain the bounds of the extreme eigenvalues of a normalized and signless Laplacian matrices using by their traces. In addition, we determine the bounds for k-th eigenvalues of normalized and signless Laplacian matrices.
In [Steve Butler. A note about cospectral graphs for the adjacency and normalized Laplacian matrices. Linear Multilinear Algebra, 58(3-4):387-390, 2010.], Butler constructed a family of bipartite graphs, which are cospectral for both the adjacency and the normalized Laplacian matrices. In this article, we extend this construction for generating larger classes of bipartite graphs, which are cospectral for both the adjacency and the normalized Laplacian matrices. Also, we provide a couple of constructions of non-bipartite graphs, which are cospectral for the adjacency matrices but not necessaril…
In this paper we show a monotonicity theorem for the harmonic eigenfunction of λ_{1} of the normalized Laplacian over the points of articulation of a graph. We introduce the definition of Perron component for the normalized Laplacian matrix of a graph and show how its second smallest eigenvalue can be characterized using this definition.
For a simple and connected graph, several lower and upper bounds of graph invariants expressed in terms of the eigenvalues of the normalized Laplacian matrix have been proposed in literature. In this paper, through a unified approach based on majorization techniques, we provide some novel inequalities depending on additional information on the localization of the eigenvalues of the normalized Laplacian matrix. Some numerical examples show how sharper results can be obtained with respect to those existing in literature.
In this paper, we compute normalized Laplacian spectra of central graph of a regular graph, central vertex join and central edge join of two regular graphs. Also, we determine their Kemeny's constant and degree Kirchhoff index.
The spectrum of the normalized Laplacian matrix cannot determine the number of edges in a graph, however finding constructions of cospectral graphs with differing number of edges has been elusive. In this paper we use basic properties of twins and scaling to show how to construct such graphs. We also give examples of families of graphs which are cospectral with a subgraph for the normalized Laplacian matrix.
We study the spectrum of the normalized Laplace operator of a connected graph $Γ$. As is well known, the smallest nontrivial eigenvalue measures how difficult it is to decompose $Γ$ into two large pieces, whereas the largest eigenvalue controls how close $Γ$ is to being bipartite. The smallest eigenvalue can be controlled by the Cheeger constant, and we establish a dual construction that controls the largest eigenvalue. Moreover, we find that the neighborhood graphs $Γ[l]$ of order $l\geq2$ encode important spectral information about $Γ$ itself which we systematically explore. In particular, t…
Let $G$ be a connected simple graph on $n$ vertices. Let $\mathcal{L}(G)$ be the normalized Laplacian matrix of $G$ and $ρ_{n-1}(G)$ be the second least eigenvalue of $\mathcal{L}(G)$. Denote by $ν(G)$ the independence number of $G$. Recently, the paper [Characterization of graphs with some normalized Laplacian eigenvalue of multiplicity $n-3$, arXiv:1912.13227] discussed the graphs with some normalized Laplacian eigenvalue of multiplicity $n-3$. However, there is one remaining case (graphs with $ρ_{n-1}(G)\neq 1$ and $ν(G)= 2$) not considered. In this paper, we focus on cographs and graphs wi…
Let $G$ be a connected simple graph of order $n$. Let $ρ_1(G)\geq ρ_2(G)\geq \cdots \geq ρ_{n-1}(G)> ρ_n(G)=0$ be the eigenvalues of the normalized Laplacian matrix $\mathcal{L}(G)$ of $G$. Denote by $m(ρ_i)$ the multiplicity of the normalized Laplacian eigenvalue $ρ_i$. Let $ν(G)$ be the independence number of $G$. In this paper, we give a full characterization of graphs with some normalized Laplacian eigenvalue of multiplicity $n-3$, which answers a remaining problem in [S. Sun, K.C. Das, On the multiplicities of normalized Laplacian eigenvalues of graphs, Linear Algebra Appl. 609 (2021) 365…
Let $G$ be a simple connected graph with order $n$. Let $\mathcal{L}(G)$ be the normalized Laplacian matrix of $G$. Let $λ_{k}(G)$ be the $k$-th smallest normalized Laplacian eigenvalue of $G$. Denote $ρ(A)$ the spectral radius of the matrix $A$. In this paper, we study the behaviors of $λ_{2}(G)$ and $ρ(\mathcal{L}(G))$ when the graph is perturbed by three operations.
In this paper we study spectra of Laplacians of infinite weighted graphs. Instead of the assumption of local finiteness we impose the condition of summability of the weight function. Such graphs correspond to reversible Markov chains with countable state spaces. We adopt the concept of the Cheeger constant to this setting and prove an analogue of the Cheeger inequality characterising the spectral gap. We also analyse the concept of the dual Cheeger constant originally introduced in \cite{B14}, which allows estimating the top of the spectrum. In this paper we also introduce a new combinatorial …
We give a combinatorial characterization of graphs whose normalized Laplacian has three distinct eigenvalues. Strongly regular graphs and complete bipartite graphs are examples of such graphs, but we also construct more exotic families of examples from conference graphs, projective planes, and certain quasi-symmetric designs.
For a simple connected graph $ G $ of order $ n $, the normalized Laplacian is a square matrix of order $ n $, defined as $\mathcal{L}(G)= D(G)^{-\frac{1}{2}}L(G)D(G)^{-\frac{1}{2}}$, where $ D(G)^{-\frac{1}{2}} $ is the diagonal matrix whose $ i$-th diagonal entry is $ \frac{1}{\sqrt{d_{i}}} $. In this article, we find the normalized Laplacian eigenvalues of the joined union of regular graphs in terms of the adjacency eigenvalues and the eigenvalues of quotient matrix associated with graph $ G $. For a finite group $\mathcal{G}$, the power graph $\mathcal{P}(\mathcal{G})$ of a group $ \mathca…
The classical Cheeger's inequality relates the edge conductance $ϕ$ of a graph and the second smallest eigenvalue $λ_2$ of the Laplacian matrix. Recently, Olesker-Taylor and Zanetti discovered a Cheeger-type inequality $ψ^2 / \log |V| \lesssim λ_2^* \lesssim ψ$ connecting the vertex expansion $ψ$ of a graph $G=(V,E)$ and the maximum reweighted second smallest eigenvalue $λ_2^*$ of the Laplacian matrix. In this work, we first improve their result to $ψ^2 / \log d \lesssim λ_2^* \lesssim ψ$ where $d$ is the maximum degree in $G$, which is optimal assuming the small-set expansion conjecture. Also…
Graphs with few distinct eigenvalues have been investigated extensively. In this paper, we focus on another relevant topic: characterizing graphs with some eigenvalue of large multiplicity. Specifically, the normalized Laplacian matrix of a graph is considered here. Let $ρ_{n-1}(G)$ and $ν(G)$ be the second least normalized Laplacian eigenvalue and the independence number of a graph $G$, respectively. As the main conclusions, two families of $n$-vertex connected graphs with some normalized Laplacian eigenvalue of multiplicity $n-3$ are determined: graphs with $ρ_{n-1}(G)=-1$ and graphs with $ρ…
Let G be a graph and let Δ,δbe the maximum and minimum degrees of G respectively, where Δ/δ<c<\sqrt{2} and c is a constant. In this paper we establish a sufficient spectral condition for the graph G to be Hamiltonian, that is, the nontrivial eigenvalues of the normalized Laplacian of G are sufficiently close to 1.
