The adjacency spectra of some families of minimally connected prime graphs (Q6197638)

Given a finite group \(G\), its prime graph \(\Gamma_{G}\) is the graph whose vertices are the prime divisors of the order of \(G\), and such that \(\{p,q\}\) is an edge if and only if there is an element of order \(pq\) in \(G\). In [\textit{A. Gruber} et al., J. Algebra 442, 397--422 (2015; Zbl 1331.20029)] it is shown that a graph \(\Gamma\) is isomorphic to the prime graph of a finite solvable group if and only if its complement \(\overline{\Gamma}\) is triangle-free and \(3\)-colorable. Let \(\mathcal{H}\) be the family of all prime graphs of finite solvable groups. A minimal prime graph (MPG) is a nontrivial connected graph \(\Gamma \in \mathcal{H}\) such that, for each edge \(e \in E(\Gamma)\), \(\Gamma - e \notin \mathcal{H}\). A minimally connected prime graph (MCPG) is a nontrivial connected graph \(\Gamma \in \mathcal{H}\) such that, for each edge \(e \in E(\Gamma)\), \(\Gamma - e \notin \mathcal{H}\) or \(\Gamma - e\) is not connected. Let \(\mathcal{G}\) be the family of all MPGs and \(\widehat{\mathcal{G}}\) be the family of all MCPGs. In this paper, the authors study some classes of MCPGs from a linear algebraic perspective. The complete bridge graph \(B_{m,n}\) is the graph obtained by adding an edge between a copy of \(K_{m}\) and a copy of \(K_{n}\). A reseminant graph is a graph obtained from the cycle \(C_{5}\) by duplicating vertices. Let \(\mathcal{R}\) denote the family of reseminant graphs, and \(\widetilde{\mathcal{R}}\) denote the subfamily of those graphs obtained by repeated duplication of a single vertex. In [\textit{C. Florez} et al., ``Minimal Prime Graphs of Solvable Groups'', Preprint, arXiv:2011.10403 [math.CO] (2020)] it is shown that \(\widehat{\mathcal{G}} \setminus \mathcal{G}\) consists of the graphs \(B_{m,n}\) where \(m \geq n > 1\) or \((m,n) \in \{ (1,1), (2,1) \}\), and that \(\mathcal{R} \subsetneq \mathcal{G}\). The main results in this paper are (a) the computations of the characteristic polynomials of \(B_{m,n}\) (for \(m + n > 4\)) and the graphs in \(\mathcal{R}\); (b) the computations of the spectra of \(B_{m,m-1}\) (for \(m > 2\)) and the graphs in \(\widetilde{\mathcal{R}}\); (c) the following characterization of the subfamily \(\widetilde{\mathcal{R}}\): if \(\Gamma \in \mathcal{R}\), then \(\Gamma \in \widetilde{\mathcal{R}}\) if and only if \(\Gamma\) has at least two adjacent vertices of degree \(2\).