Spectra of Schroedinger operators on equilateral quantum graphs

We consider magnetic Schroedinger operators on quantum graphs with identical edges. The spectral problem for the quantum graph is reduced to the discrete magnetic Laplacian on the underlying combinatorial graph and a certain Hill operator. In particular, it is shown that the spectrum on the quantum graph is the preimage of the combinatorial spectrum under a certain entire function. Using this correspondence we show that that the number of gaps in the spectrum of the Schroedinger operators admits an estimate from below in terms of the Hill operator independently of the graph structure.