Computing Kemeny's constant for a barbell graph

Abstract

In a graph theory setting, Kemeny’s constant is a graph parameter which measures a weighted average of the mean first passage times in a random walk on the vertices of the graph. In one sense, Kemeny’s constant is a measure of how well the graph is ‘connected’. An explicit computation for this parameter is given for graphs of order n consisting of two large cliques joined by an arbitrary number of parallel paths of equal length, as well as for two cliques joined by two paths of different length. In each case, Kemeny’s constant is shown to be O(n3), which is the largest possible order of Kemeny’s constant for a graph on n vertices. The approach used is based on interesting techniques in spectral graph theory and includes a generalization of using twin subgraphs to find the spectrum of a graph.