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Spectral arbitrariness for trees fails spectacularly

Combinatorics 2023-01-27 v1 Spectral Theory

Abstract

If GG is a graph and m\mathbf{m} is an ordered multiplicity list which is realizable by at least one symmetric matrix with graph GG, what can we say about the eigenvalues of all such realizing matrices for m\mathbf{m}? It has sometimes been tempting to expect, especially in the case that GG is a tree, that any spacing of the multiple eigenvalues should be realizable. In 2004, however, F. Barioli and S. Fallat produced the first counterexample: a tree on 16 vertices and an ordered multiplicity list for which every realizing set of eigenvalues obeys a nontrivial linear constraint. We extend this by giving an infinite family of trees and ordered multiplicity lists whose sets of realizing eigenvalues are very highly constrained, with at most 5 degrees of freedom, regardless of the size of the tree in this family. In particular, we give the first examples of multiplicity lists for a tree which impose nontrivial nonlinear eigenvalue constraints and produce an ordered multiplicity list which is achieved by a unique set of eigenvalues, up to shifting and scaling.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2301.11073,
  title  = {Spectral arbitrariness for trees fails spectacularly},
  author = {Shaun M. Fallat and H. Tracy Hall and Rupert H. Levene and Seth A. Meyer and Shahla Nasserasr and Polona Oblak and Helena Šmigoc},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2301.11073},
  year   = {2023}
}

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45 pages