Upper bound of the multiplicity of Laplacian eigenvalue 1 of trees (Q6944102)

The Laplacian matrix of a graph \(G\) is the matrix \(L(G) = D(G) - A(G)\), where \(D(G)\) is the diagonal degree matrix and \(A(G)\) is the adjacency matrix. In this paper, the authors prove an upper bound on the multiplicity \(m_{L(T)}(1)\) of the eigenvalue \(1\) of the Laplacian matrix of a tree \(T\) of order \(n\) in terms of the number of pendant vertices \(p(T)\) and the number of quasi-pendant vertices \(q(T)\) of the tree \(T\). A vertex \(u\) is a pendant vertex if its degree is \(1\), and the unique vertex adjacent to \(u\) is a quasi-pendant vertex. One of the main results of the paper is that for any tree \(T\) on \(n \ge 3\) vertices, the equality\N\[\Nm_{L(T)}(1) = p(T) - q(T) + m_{L(\overline{T})}(1)\N\]\Nholds, where \(\overline{T}\) is the reduced tree obtained from \(T\) by deleting some pendant vertices so that \(p(\overline{T}) = q(\overline{T})\). Using this result, for any tree \(T\) on \(n\ge 6\) vertices the authors prove the upper bound\N\[\Nm_{L(T)}(1) \le p(T) - q(T) + \frac{n-2}{4}.\N\]