English

Characterization of Complete Bipartite Graphs via Resistance Spectra

Combinatorics 2025-12-17 v1

Abstract

The notion of resistance distance, introduced by Klein and Randi\'c, has become a fundamental concept in spectral graph theory and network analysis, as it captures both the structural and electrical properties of a graph. The associated resistance spectrum serves as a graph invariant and plays an important role in problems related to graph isomorphism. For an undirected graph G=(V,E)G=(V,E), the resistance distance RG(u,v)R_G(u,v) between two distinct vertices uu and vv is defined as the effective resistance between them when each edge of GG is replaced by a 1Ω1\,\Omega resistor. The multiset of all resistance distances over unordered pairs of distinct vertices is called the \emph{resistance spectrum} of GG, denoted by RS(G)\operatorname{RS}(G). A graph GG is said to be \emph{determined by its resistance spectrum} if, for any graph HH, the equality RS(H)=RS(G)\operatorname{RS}(H)=\operatorname{RS}(G) implies that HH is isomorphic to GG. Complete bipartite graphs, denoted by Km,nK_{m,n}, are highly symmetric and constitute an important class of graphs in graph theory. In this paper, by exploiting properties of resistance distances, we prove that the complete bipartite graphs Kn,nK_{n,n}, Kn,n+1K_{n,n+1}, K2,nK_{2,n}, and Km,nK_{m,n} with m>3n+1m>3n+1 are uniquely determined by their resistance spectra.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.14195,
  title  = {Characterization of Complete Bipartite Graphs via Resistance Spectra},
  author = {Xiang-Yang Liu and Xiang-Feng Pan and Yong-Yi Jin and Li-Cheng Li},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.14195},
  year   = {2025}
}