The extremal problems on the inertia of weighted bicyclic graphs

Let $G_w$ be a weighted graph. The number of the positive, negative and zero eigenvalues in the spectrum of $G_w$ are called positive inertia index, negative inertia index and nullity of $G_w$, and denoted by $i_{+}(G_w)$, $i_{-}(G_w)$, $i_{0}(G_w)$, respectively. In this paper, sharp lower bound on the positive (resp. negative) inertia index of weighted bicyclic graphs of order $n$ with pendant vertices is obtained. Moreover, all the weighted bicyclic graphs of order $n$ with at most two positive, two negative and at least $n-4$ zero eigenvalues are identified, respectively.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1307.0059 by other author

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

On the Nullity Number of Graphs

The paper discusses bounds on the nullity number of graphs. It is proved in [B. Cheng and B. Liu, On the nullity of graphs. Electron. J. Linear Algebra 16 (2007) 60--67] that $\eta \le n - D$, where $\eta$, n and D denote the nullity number, the order and the diameter of a connected graph, respectively. We first give a necessary condition on the extremal graphs corresponding to that bound, and then we strengthen the bound itself using the maximum clique number. In addition, we prove bounds on the nullity using the number of pendant neighbors in a graph. One of those bounds is an improvement of a known bound involving the domination number

A characterization of graphs with rank 5

AbstractThe rank of a graph G is defined to be the rank of its adjacency matrix. In this paper, we consider the following problem: what is the structure of a connected graph G with rank 5? or equivalently, what is the structure of a connected n-vertex graph G whose adjacency matrix has nullity n-5? In this paper, we completely characterize connected graphs G whose adjacency matrix has rank 5

The inertia of unicyclic graphs and the implications for closed-shells

AbstractThe inertia of a graph is an integer triple specifying the number of negative, zero, and positive eigenvalues of the adjacency matrix of the graph. A unicyclic graph is a simple connected graph with an equal number of vertices and edges. This paper characterizes the inertia of a unicyclic graph in terms of maximum matchings and gives a linear-time algorithm for computing it. Chemists are interested in whether the molecular graph of an unsaturated hydrocarbon is (properly) closed-shell, having exactly half of its eigenvalues greater than zero, because this designates a stable electron configuration. The inertia determines whether a graph is closed-shell, and hence the reported result gives a linear-time algorithm for determining this for unicyclic graphs