Trees with a large Laplacian eigenvalue multiplicity

Abstract

In this paper, we study the multiplicity of the Laplacian eigenvalues of trees. It is known that for trees, integer Laplacian eigenvalues larger than 1 are simple and also the multiplicity of Laplacian eigenvalue 1 has been well studied before. Here we consider the multiplicities of the other (non-integral) Laplacian eigenvalues. We give an upper bound and determine the trees of order n that have a multiplicity that is close to the upper bound n−32, and emphasize the particular role of the algebraic connectivity.