In this article, we introduce a geometric and a spectral preorder relation on
the class of weighted graphs with a magnetic potential. The first preorder is
expressed through the existence of a graph homomorphism respecting the magnetic
potential and fulfilling certain inequalities for the weights. The second
preorder refers to the spectrum of the associated Laplacian of the magnetic
weighted graph. These relations give a quantitative control of the effect of
elementary and composite perturbations of the graph (deleting edges,
contracting vertices, etc.) on the spectrum of the corresponding Laplacians,
generalising interlacing of eigenvalues.
We give several applications of the preorders: we show how to classify graphs
according to these preorders and we prove the stability of certain eigenvalues
in graphs with a maximal d-clique. Moreover, we show the monotonicity of the
eigenvalues when passing to spanning subgraphs and the monotonicity of magnetic
Cheeger constants with respect to the geometric preorder. Finally, we prove a
refined procedure to detect spectral gaps in the spectrum of an infinite
covering graph.Comment: 26 pages; 8 figure