The degree-distance and transmission-adjacency matrices

TL;DR

This paper studies the Smith normal form and spectrum of certain matrices derived from graphs, revealing their effectiveness in graph isomorphism and their unique properties, especially for complete graphs.

Contribution

It introduces new matrix forms combining degree, distance, and transmission matrices, analyzing their SNF and spectrum for graph identification and properties.

Findings

SNF of $A^{trs}$ has unique behavior compared to classical matrices.

Complete graphs are uniquely determined by the SNF of these matrices.

Results connect matrix spectra and SNF to graph isomorphism and structure.

Abstract

Let $G$ be a connected graph with adjacency matrix $A(G)$. The distance matrix $D(G)$ of $G$ has rows and columns indexed by $V(G)$ with $uv$-entry equal to the distance $\mathrm{dist}(u,v)$ which is the number of edges in a shortest path between the vertices $u$ and $v$. The transmission $\mathrm{trs}(u)$ of $u$ is defined as $\sum_{v\in V(G)}\mathrm{dist}(u,v)$. Let $\mathrm{trs}(G)$ be the diagonal matrix with the transmissions of the vertices of $G$ in the diagonal, and $\mathrm{deg}(G)$ the diagonal matrix with the degrees of the vertices in the diagonal. In this paper we investigate the Smith normal form (SNF) and the spectrum of the matrices $D^{\mathrm{deg}}_+(G):=\mathrm{deg}(G)+D(G)$, $D^{\mathrm{deg}}(G):=\mathrm{deg}(G)-D(G)$, $A^{\mathrm{trs}}_+(G):=\mathrm{trs}(G)+A(G)$ and $A^{\mathrm{trs}}(G):=\mathrm{trs}(G)-A(G)$. In particular, we explore how good the spectrum and the SNF of these matrices are for determining graphs up to isomorphism. We found that the SNF of $A^{\mathrm{trs}}$ has an interesting behaviour when compared with other classical matrices. We note that the SNF of $A^{\mathrm{trs}}$ can be used to compute the structure of the sandpile group of certain graphs. We compute the SNF of $D^{\mathrm{deg}}_+$, $D^{\mathrm{deg}}$, $A^{\mathrm{trs}}_+$ and $A^{\mathrm{trs}}$ for several graph families. We prove that complete graphs are determined by the SNF of $D^{\mathrm{deg}}_+$, $D^{\mathrm{deg}}$, $A^{\mathrm{trs}}_+$ and $A^{\mathrm{trs}}$. Finally, we derive some results about the spectrum of $D^{\mathrm{deg}}$ and $A^{\mathrm{trs}}$.