The ancestral matrix of a rooted tree (Q2419059)

In this paper, the authors are interested in the combinatorial and spectral properties of a matrix associated with a rooted tree. Given a rooted tree \(T\) with leaves \(v_1, v_2, \dots, v_n\), they define the ancestral matrix \(C(T)\) of \(T\) to be the \(n\times n\) matrix for which the entry in the \(i\)-th row, \(j\)-th column is the level (distance from the root) of the first common ancestor of \(v_i\) and \(v_j\). They study properties of this matrix, in particular regarding its spectrum: they obtain several upper and lower bounds for the eigenvalues in terms of other tree parameters. They also find a combinatorial interpretation for the coefficients of the characteristic polynomial of \(C(T)\), and show that for \(d\)-ary trees, a specific value of the characteristic polynomial is independent of the precise shape of the tree.