English

A new conjecture on the inertia of graphs

Combinatorics 2025-12-23 v3

Abstract

Let GG be a graph with adjacency matrix A(G)A(G). We conjecture that 2n+(G)n(G)(n(G)+1),2n^+(G) \le n^-(G)(n^-(G) + 1), where n+(G)n^+(G) and n(G)n^-(G) denote the number of positive and negative eigenvalues of A(G)A(G), respectively. This conjecture generalizes to all graphs the well-known absolute bound for strongly regular graphs. The conjecture also relates to a question posed by Torga\v{s}ev. We prove the conjecture for special graph families, including line graphs and planar graphs, and provide examples where the conjecture is exact. We also conjecture that for any connected graph GG, its line graph L(G)L(G) satisfies n+(L(G))n(L(G))+1n^+(L(G)) \le n^-(L(G)) + 1, and obtain partial results.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.01163,
  title  = {A new conjecture on the inertia of graphs},
  author = {Saieed Akbari and Clive Elphick and Hitesh Kumar and Shivaramakrishna Pragada and Quanyu Tang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.01163},
  year   = {2025}
}

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