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

Further results on the nullity of signed graphs

The nullity of a graph is the multiplicity of the eigenvalues zero in its spectrum. A signed graph is a graph with a sign attached to each of its edges. In this paper, we obtain the coefficient theorem of the characteristic polynomial of a signed graph, give two formulae on the nullity of signed graphs with cut-points. As applications of the above results, we investigate the nullity of the bicyclic signed graph $\Gamma(\infty(p,q,l))$, obtain the nullity set of unbalanced bicyclic signed graphs, and thus determine the nullity set of bicyclic signed graphs.Comment: 17 pages. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1207.6765, arXiv:1107.0400 by other author

The triangle-free graphs with rank 6

The rank of a graph G is defined to be the rank of its adjacency matrix A(G). In this paper we characterize all connected triangle-free graphs with rank 6

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