Laplacian spectral properties of signed circular caterpillars

A circular caterpillar of girth n is a graph such that the removal of all pendant vertices yields a cycle Cn of order n. A signed graph is a pair Γ = (G, σ), where G is a simple graph and σ ∶ E(G) → {+1, −1} is the sign function defined on the set E(G) of edges of G. The signed graph Γ is said to be balanced if the number of negatively signed edges in each cycle is even, and it is said to be unbalanced otherwise. We determine some bounds for the first n Laplacian eigenvalues of any signed circular caterpillar. As an application, we prove that each signed spiked triangle (G(3; p, q, r), σ), i. e. a signed circular caterpillar of girth 3 and degree sequence πp,q,r = (p + 2, q + 2, r + 2, 1,..., 1), is determined by its Laplacian spectrum up to switching isomorphism. Moreover, in the set of signed spiked triangles of order N, we identify the extremal graphs with respect to the Laplacian spectral radius and the first two Zagreb indices. It turns out that the unbalanced spiked triangle with degree sequence πN−3,0,0 and the balanced spike triangle (G(3; p, ^ q, ^ r^), +), where each pair in {p, ^ q, ^ r^} differs at most by 1, respectively maximizes and minimizes the Laplacian spectral radius and both the Zagreb indices

A lower bound for the first Zagreb index and its application

For a graph G, the first Zagreb index is defined as the sum of the squares of the vertices degrees. By investigating the connection between the first Zagreb index and the first three coefficients of the Laplacian characteristic polynomial, we give a lower bound for the first Zagreb index, and we determine all corresponding extremal graphs. By doing so, we generalize some known results, and, as an application, we use these results to study the Laplacian spectral determination of graphs with small first Zagreb index

Signed bicyclic graphs with minimal index

The index of a signed graph \Sigma = (G; \sigma) is just the largest eigenvalue of its adjacency matrix. For any n > 4 we identify the signed graphs achieving the minimum index in the class of signed bicyclic graphs with n vertices. Apart from the n = 4 case, such graphs are obtained by considering a starlike tree with four branches of suitable length (i.e. four distinct paths joined at their end vertex u) with two additional negative independent edges pairwise joining the four vertices adjacent to u. As a by-product, all signed bicyclic graphs containing a theta-graph and whose index is less than 2 are detected

Ordering signed graphs with large index

The index of a signed graph is the largest eigenvalue of its adjacency matrix. We establish the first few signed graphs ordered decreasingly by the index in classes of connected signed graphs, connected unbalanced signed graphs and complete signed graphs with a fixed number of vertices

Topological and spectral properties of random digraphs

We investigate some topological and spectral properties of Erd\H{o}s-R\'{e}nyi (ER) random digraphs $D(n,p)$. In terms of topological properties, our primary focus lies in analyzing the number of non-isolated vertices $V_x(D)$ as well as two vertex-degree-based topological indices: the Randi\'c index $R(D)$ and sum-connectivity index $\chi(D)$. First, by performing a scaling analysis we show that the average degree $\langle k \rangle$ serves as scaling parameter for the average values of $V_x(D)$, $R(D)$ and $\chi(D)$. Then, we also state expressions relating the number of arcs, spectral radius, and closed walks of length 2 to $(n,p)$, the parameters of ER random digraphs. Concerning spectral properties, we compute six different graph energies on $D(n,p)$. We start by validating $\langle k \rangle$ as the scaling parameter of the graph energies. Additionally, we reformulate a set of bounds previously reported in the literature for these energies as a function $(n,p)$. Finally, we phenomenologically state relations between energies that allow us to extend previously known bounds

Eccentric connectivity index

The eccentric connectivity index $\xi^c$ is a novel distance--based molecular structure descriptor that was recently used for mathematical modeling of biological activities of diverse nature. It is defined as $\xi^c (G) = \sum_{v \in V (G)} deg (v) \cdot \epsilon (v)$\,, where $deg (v)$ and $\epsilon (v)$ denote the vertex degree and eccentricity of $v$\,, respectively. We survey some mathematical properties of this index and furthermore support the use of eccentric connectivity index as topological structure descriptor. We present the extremal trees and unicyclic graphs with maximum and minimum eccentric connectivity index subject to the certain graph constraints. Sharp lower and asymptotic upper bound for all graphs are given and various connections with other important graph invariants are established. In addition, we present explicit formulae for the values of eccentric connectivity index for several families of composite graphs and designed a linear algorithm for calculating the eccentric connectivity index of trees. Some open problems and related indices for further study are also listed.Comment: 25 pages, 5 figure