On the Laplacian spread of digraphs (Q2689149)

The paper extends the notion of the Laplacian spread to digraphs using the restricted numerical range, where the restricted numerical range is a closed convex set in the complex plane, and the Laplacian spread of a digraph can be viewed geometrically as the length of the real part of its restricted numerical range. The authors then use the digraph characterizations via the restricted numerical range to give the Laplacian spread values for several families of digraphs, resulting in sharp upper bounds on the Laplacian spread for all polygonal digraphs. In addition, it is shown that the Laplacian spread has a sharp bound of \((n-1)\) for all balanced digraphs of order \(n\). Furthermore, it gives an equivalent statement for balanced digraphs with weights in the interval \([0,1]\). It is worth noting that not all digraphs have a Laplacian spread bounded above by their order. Finally, the authors formally state a conjecture regarding the Laplacian spread of digraphs by noting that any bound that is proven for the Laplacian spread of digraphs will hold more generally for weighted digraphs and the concavity of the algebraic connectivity.