On adjacency operators of locally finite graphs

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive theory of eigenvalues and eigenfunctions for adjacency operators on infinite locally finite graphs, extending finite graph spectral theory to more general infinite cases, especially for connected graphs with bounded degrees over complex numbers.

Contribution

It introduces a general framework for analyzing eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of adjacency operators on infinite locally finite graphs, surpassing previous limited approaches.

Findings

Extended spectral theory to infinite graphs with bounded degrees

Provided new characterizations of eigenvalues and eigenfunctions

Enhanced understanding of adjacency operators in infinite graph contexts

Abstract

A graph $\Gamma$ is called locally finite if, for each vertex $v$ of $\Gamma$, the set $\Gamma(v)$ of all neighbors of $v$ in $\Gamma$ is finite. For any locally finite graph $\Gamma$ with vertex set $V(\Gamma)$ and for any field $F$, let $F^{V(\Gamma)}$ be the vector space over $F$ of all functions $V(\Gamma) \to F$ (with natural componentwise operations) and let $A^{({\rm alg})}_{\Gamma,F}$ be the linear operator $F^{V(\Gamma)} \to F^{V(\Gamma)}$ defined by $(A^{({\rm alg})}_{\Gamma,F}(f))(v) = \sum_{u \in \Gamma(v)}f(u)$ for all $f \in F^{V(\Gamma)}$, $v \in V(\Gamma)$. In the case of finite graph $\Gamma$ the mapping $A^{({\rm alg})}_{\Gamma,F}$ is the well known operator defined by the adjacency matrix of $\Gamma$ (over $F$), and the theory of eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of such operator is a well-developed (at least in the case $F = \mathbb{C}$) part of the theory of finite graphs. In this paper we develope a theory of eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of $A^{({\rm alg})}_{\Gamma,F}$ for arbitrary infinite locally finite graphs $\Gamma$ (although a few results may be of interest for finite graphs) and fields $F$ with a special emphasis on the case when $\Gamma$ is connected with uniformly bounded vertex degrees and $F = \mathbb{C}$. By the author opinion, previous attempts in this direction were not quite satisfactory since were limited by consideration of rather special eigenfunctions and corresponding eigenvalues.