Generalized spectral characterization of signed trees (Q6987874)

The spectra of graphs encode a lot of combinatorial information about the given graphs. A major unsolved question in spectral graph theory is: ``What kinds of graphs are determined (up to isomorphism) by their spectrum (DS for short)?'' This paper contains good information on DS.\N\NThis article rigorously extends spectral characterization principles to the domain of signed graphs, particularly trees. The authors prove that if a tree's characteristic polynomial is irreducible over the rationals and satisfies certain arithmetic conditions (involving the discriminant), then all its signed versions are uniquely determined by their generalized spectrum.\N\NThis generalizes earlier spectral characterizations from unsigned to signed trees, using deep connections between graph spectra and number theory. The paper is useful to graph spectra and number theory researchers.