Edge-disjoint spanning trees and eigenvalues (Q2442253)

Given a graph \(G\), let \(\tau(G)\) denote the maximum number of edge-disjoint spanning trees of \(G\). Also, let \(\lambda_2(G)\) denote the second largest eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix of \(G\). For \(k\in \{2,3\}\), \textit{S. M. Cioabă} and \textit{W. Wong} [Linear Algebra Appl. 437, No. 2, 630--647 (2012; Zbl 1242.05056)] proved that if \(d\geq 2k\geq 4\) and \(G\) is a \(d\)-regular graph with \(\lambda_2(G)\leq d-\frac{2k-1}{d+1}\), then \(\tau(G)\geq k\); Cioabă and Wong [loc. cit.] conjectured that this result should be true for any \(k\). Motivated by this and other related work, this paper shows that if \(G\) is a graph with minimum degree \(\delta\) and \(\lambda_2(G)\leq \delta-\frac{2k-2/k}{d+1}\), then \(\tau(G)\geq k\). This shows that the Cioabă-Wong conjecture holds for large \(n\).