Isospectral Graph Reductions and Improved Estimates of Matrices' Spectra

Abstract

Via the process of isospectral graph reduction the adjacency matrix of a graph can be reduced to a smaller matrix while its spectrum is preserved up to some known set. It is then possible to estimate the spectrum of the original matrix by considering Gershgorin-type estimates associated with the reduced matrix. The main result of this paper is that eigenvalue estimates associated with Gershgorin, Brauer, Brualdi, and Varga improve as the matrix size is reduced. Moreover, given that such estimates improve with each successive reduction, it is also possible to estimate the eigenvalues of a matrix with increasing accuracy by repeated use of this process.