The spectral analysis of random graph matrices

A random graph model is a set of graphs together with a probability distribution on that set. A random matrix is a matrix with entries consisting of random values from some specified distribution. Many different random matrices can be associated with a random graph. The spectra of these corresponding matrices are called the spectra of the random graph. The spectra of random graphs are critical to understanding the properties of random graphs. This thesis contains a number of results on the spectra and related spectral properties of several random graph models. In Chapter 1, we briefly present the background, some history as well as the main ideas behind our work. Apart from the introduction in Chapter 1, the first part of the main body of the thesis is Chapter 2. In this part we estimate the eigenvalues of the Laplacian matrix of random multipartite graphs. We also investigate some spectral properties of random multipartite graphs, such as the Laplacian energy, the Laplacian Estrada index, and the von Neumann entropy. The second part consists of Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6. Guo and Mohar showed that mixed graphs are equivalent to digraphs if we regard (replace) each undirected edge as (by) two oppositely directed arcs. Motivated by the work of Guo and Mohar, we initially propose a new random graph model – the random mixed graph. Each arc is determined by an in-dependent random variable. The main themes of the second part are the spectra and related spectral properties of random mixed graphs. In Chapter 3, we prove that the empirical distribution of the eigenvalues of the Hermitian adjacency matrix converges to Wigner’s semicircle law. As an application of the LSD of Hermitian adjacency matrices, we estimate the Hermitian energy of a random mixed graph. In Chapter 4, we deal with the asymptotic behavior of the spectrum of the Hermitian adjacency matrix of random mixed graphs. We derive a separation result between the first and the remaining eigenvalues of the Hermitian adjacency matrix. As an application of the asymptotic behavior of the spectrum of the Hermitian adjacency matrix, we estimate the spectral moments of random mixed graphs. In Chapter 5, we prove that the empirical distribution of the eigenvalues of the normalized Hermitian Laplacian matrix converges to Wigner’s semicircle law. Moreover, in Chapter 6, we provide several results on the spectra of general random mixed graphs. In particular, we present a new probability inequality for sums of independent, random, self-adjoint matrices, and then apply this probability inequality to matrices arising from the study of random mixed graphs. We prove a concentration result involving the spectral norm of a random matrix and that of its expectation. Assuming that the probabilities of all the arcs of the mixed graph are mutually independent, we write the Hermitian adjacency matrix as a sum of random self-adjoint matrices. Using this, we estimate the spectrum of the Hermitian adjacency matrix, and prove a concentration result involving the spectrum of the normalized Hermitian Laplacian matrix and its expectation. Finally, in Chapter 7, we estimate upper bounds for the spectral radii of the skew adjacency matrix and skew Randić matrix of random oriented graphs

Approximating the Spectrum of a Graph

The spectrum of a network or graph $G=(V,E)$ with adjacency matrix $A$, consists of the eigenvalues of the normalized Laplacian $L= I - D^{-1/2} A D^{-1/2}$. This set of eigenvalues encapsulates many aspects of the structure of the graph, including the extent to which the graph posses community structures at multiple scales. We study the problem of approximating the spectrum $\lambda = (\lambda_1,\dots,\lambda_{|V|})$, $0 \le \lambda_1,\le \dots, \le \lambda_{|V|}\le 2$ of $G$ in the regime where the graph is too large to explicitly calculate the spectrum. We present a sublinear time algorithm that, given the ability to query a random node in the graph and select a random neighbor of a given node, computes a succinct representation of an approximation $\widetilde \lambda = (\widetilde \lambda_1,\dots,\widetilde \lambda_{|V|})$, $0 \le \widetilde \lambda_1,\le \dots, \le \widetilde \lambda_{|V|}\le 2$ such that $\|\widetilde \lambda - \lambda\|_1 \le \epsilon |V|$. Our algorithm has query complexity and running time $exp(O(1/\epsilon))$, independent of the size of the graph, $|V|$. We demonstrate the practical viability of our algorithm on 15 different real-world graphs from the Stanford Large Network Dataset Collection, including social networks, academic collaboration graphs, and road networks. For the smallest of these graphs, we are able to validate the accuracy of our algorithm by explicitly calculating the true spectrum; for the larger graphs, such a calculation is computationally prohibitive. In addition we study the implications of our algorithm to property testing in the bounded degree graph model

Moment-Based Spectral Analysis of Random Graphs with Given Expected Degrees

In this paper, we analyze the limiting spectral distribution of the adjacency matrix of a random graph ensemble, proposed by Chung and Lu, in which a given expected degree sequence $\overline{w}_n^{^{T}} = (w^{(n)}_1,\ldots,w^{(n)}_n)$ is prescribed on the ensemble. Let $\mathbf{a}_{i,j} =1$ if there is an edge between the nodes $\{i,j\}$ and zero otherwise, and consider the normalized random adjacency matrix of the graph ensemble: $\mathbf{A}_n$ $=$ $[\mathbf{a}_{i,j}/\sqrt{n}]_{i,j=1}^{n}$. The empirical spectral distribution of $\mathbf{A}_n$ denoted by $\mathbf{F}_n(\mathord{\cdot})$ is the empirical measure putting a mass $1/n$ at each of the $n$ real eigenvalues of the symmetric matrix $\mathbf{A}_n$. Under some technical conditions on the expected degree sequence, we show that with probability one, $\mathbf{F}_n(\mathord{\cdot})$ converges weakly to a deterministic distribution $F(\mathord{\cdot})$. Furthermore, we fully characterize this distribution by providing explicit expressions for the moments of $F(\mathord{\cdot})$. We apply our results to well-known degree distributions, such as power-law and exponential. The asymptotic expressions of the spectral moments in each case provide significant insights about the bulk behavior of the eigenvalue spectrum

Network Density of States

Spectral analysis connects graph structure to the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of associated matrices. Much of spectral graph theory descends directly from spectral geometry, the study of differentiable manifolds through the spectra of associated differential operators. But the translation from spectral geometry to spectral graph theory has largely focused on results involving only a few extreme eigenvalues and their associated eigenvalues. Unlike in geometry, the study of graphs through the overall distribution of eigenvalues - the spectral density - is largely limited to simple random graph models. The interior of the spectrum of real-world graphs remains largely unexplored, difficult to compute and to interpret. In this paper, we delve into the heart of spectral densities of real-world graphs. We borrow tools developed in condensed matter physics, and add novel adaptations to handle the spectral signatures of common graph motifs. The resulting methods are highly efficient, as we illustrate by computing spectral densities for graphs with over a billion edges on a single compute node. Beyond providing visually compelling fingerprints of graphs, we show how the estimation of spectral densities facilitates the computation of many common centrality measures, and use spectral densities to estimate meaningful information about graph structure that cannot be inferred from the extremal eigenpairs alone.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Spectra of "Real-World" Graphs: Beyond the Semi-Circle Law

Many natural and social systems develop complex networks, that are usually modelled as random graphs. The eigenvalue spectrum of these graphs provides information about their structural properties. While the semi-circle law is known to describe the spectral density of uncorrelated random graphs, much less is known about the eigenvalues of real-world graphs, describing such complex systems as the Internet, metabolic pathways, networks of power stations, scientific collaborations or movie actors, which are inherently correlated and usually very sparse. An important limitation in addressing the spectra of these systems is that the numerical determination of the spectra for systems with more than a few thousand nodes is prohibitively time and memory consuming. Making use of recent advances in algorithms for spectral characterization, here we develop new methods to determine the eigenvalues of networks comparable in size to real systems, obtaining several surprising results on the spectra of adjacency matrices corresponding to models of real-world graphs. We find that when the number of links grows as the number of nodes, the spectral density of uncorrelated random graphs does not converge to the semi-circle law. Furthermore, the spectral densities of real-world graphs have specific features depending on the details of the corresponding models. In particular, scale-free graphs develop a triangle-like spectral density with a power law tail, while small-world graphs have a complex spectral density function consisting of several sharp peaks. These and further results indicate that the spectra of correlated graphs represent a practical tool for graph classification and can provide useful insight into the relevant structural properties of real networks.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures (corrected typos, added references) accepted for Phys. Rev.

Random incidence matrices: moments of the spectral density

We study numerically and analytically the spectrum of incidence matrices of random labeled graphs on N vertices : any pair of vertices is connected by an edge with probability p. We give two algorithms to compute the moments of the eigenvalue distribution as explicit polynomials in N and p. For large N and fixed p the spectrum contains a large eigenvalue at Np and a semi-circle of "small" eigenvalues. For large N and fixed average connectivity pN (dilute or sparse random matrices limit), we show that the spectrum always contains a discrete component. An anomaly in the spectrum near eigenvalue 0 for connectivity close to e=2.72... is observed. We develop recursion relations to compute the moments as explicit polynomials in pN. Their growth is slow enough so that they determine the spectrum. The extension of our methods to the Laplacian matrix is given in Appendix. Keywords: random graphs, random matrices, sparse matrices, incidence matrices spectrum, momentsComment: 39 pages, 9 figures, Latex2e, [v2: ref. added, Sect. 4 modified

Eigenvalue Outliers of non-Hermitian Random Matrices with a Local Tree Structure

Spectra of sparse non-Hermitian random matrices determine the dynamics of complex processes on graphs. Eigenvalue outliers in the spectrum are of particular interest, since they determine the stationary state and the stability of dynamical processes. We present a general and exact theory for the eigenvalue outliers of random matrices with a local tree structure. For adjacency and Laplacian matrices of oriented random graphs, we derive analytical expressions for the eigenvalue outliers, the first moments of the distribution of eigenvector elements associated with an outlier, the support of the spectral density, and the spectral gap. We show that these spectral observables obey universal expressions, which hold for a broad class of oriented random matrices.Comment: 25 pages, 4 figure