The effect on the largest eigenvalue of degree-based weighted adjacency matrix by perturbations (Q6186335)

For a positive real symmetric function \(f\) on two variables, consider the weighted adjacency matrix \(A_f(G)\) of a graph \(G\) such that the \((i,j)\)-entry is \(f (d_i , d_j )\), if \(i\) and \(j\) are adjacent, where \(d_k\) represents the degree of the vertex \(k\), and \(0\), otherwise. In this paper, the authors aim to unify the study of spectral properties for degree-based graph-weighted adjacency matrices. The unimodality of a positive eigenvector corresponding to the largest eigenvalue of \(A_f(G)\) on an induced path of \(G\) is considered. Moreover, if \(f (x, y)\) is increasing in the variable \(x\), it is investigated how the largest weighted adjacency eigenvalue of \(A_f(G)\) changes when \(G\) is perturbed by vertex contraction or edge subdivision.