Spanning trees and even integer eigenvalues of graphs

For a graph $G$, let $L(G)$ and $Q(G)$ be the Laplacian and signless Laplacian matrices of $G$, respectively, and $\tau(G)$ be the number of spanning trees of $G$. We prove that if $G$ has an odd number of vertices and $\tau(G)$ is not divisible by $4$, then (i) $L(G)$ has no even integer eigenvalue, (ii) $Q(G)$ has no integer eigenvalue $\lambda\equiv2\pmod4$, and (iii) $Q(G)$ has at most one eigenvalue $\lambda\equiv0\pmod4$ and such an eigenvalue is simple. As a consequence, we extend previous results by Gutman and Sciriha and by Bapat on the nullity of adjacency matrices of the line graphs. We also show that if $\tau(G)=2^ts$ with $s$ odd, then the multiplicity of any even integer eigenvalue of $Q(G)$ is at most $t+1$. Among other things, we prove that if $L(G)$ or $Q(G)$ has an even integer eigenvalue of multiplicity at least $2$, then $\tau(G)$ is divisible by $4$. As a very special case of this result, a conjecture by Zhou et al. [On the nullity of connected graphs with least eigenvalue at least $-2$, Appl. Anal. Discrete Math. 7 (2013), 250--261] on the nullity of adjacency matrices of the line graphs of unicyclic graphs follows.Comment: Final version. To appear in Discrete Mat

On a conjecture about tricyclic graphs with maximal energy

For a given simple graph $G$, the energy of $G$, denoted by $\mathcal {E}(G)$, is defined as the sum of the absolute values of all eigenvalues of its adjacency matrix, which was defined by I. Gutman. The problem on determining the maximal energy tends to be complicated for a given class of graphs. There are many approaches on the maximal energy of trees, unicyclic graphs and bicyclic graphs, respectively. Let $P^{6,6,6}_n$ denote the graph with $n\geq 20$ vertices obtained from three copies of $C_6$ and a path $P_{n-18}$ by adding a single edge between each of two copies of $C_6$ to one endpoint of the path and a single edge from the third $C_6$ to the other endpoint of the $P_{n-18}$. Very recently, Aouchiche et al. [M. Aouchiche, G. Caporossi, P. Hansen, Open problems on graph eigenvalues studied with AutoGraphiX, {\it Europ. J. Comput. Optim.} {\bf 1}(2013), 181--199] put forward the following conjecture: Let $G$ be a tricyclic graphs on $n$ vertices with $n=20$ or $n\geq22$, then $\mathcal{E}(G)\leq \mathcal{E}(P_{n}^{6,6,6})$ with equality if and only if $G\cong P_{n}^{6,6,6}$. Let $G(n;a,b,k)$ denote the set of all connected bipartite tricyclic graphs on $n$ vertices with three vertex-disjoint cycles $C_{a}$, $C_{b}$ and $C_{k}$, where $n\geq 20$. In this paper, we try to prove that the conjecture is true for graphs in the class $G\in G(n;a,b,k)$, but as a consequence we can only show that this is true for most of the graphs in the class except for 9 families of such graphs.Comment: 32 pages, 12 figure

The Nullity of Bicyclic Signed Graphs

Let \Gamma be a signed graph and let A(\Gamma) be the adjacency matrix of \Gamma. The nullity of \Gamma is the multiplicity of eigenvalue zero in the spectrum of A(\Gamma). In this paper we characterize the signed graphs of order n with nullity n-2 or n-3, and introduce a graph transformation which preserves the nullity. As an application we determine the unbalanced bicyclic signed graphs of order n with nullity n-3 or n-4, and signed bicyclic signed graphs (including simple bicyclic graphs) of order n with nullity n-5