Universality for Barycentric subdivision

Abstract

The spectrum of the Laplacian of successive Barycentric subdivisions of a graph converges exponentially fast to a limit which only depends on the clique number of the initial graph and not on the graph itself. The proof uses an explicit linear operator mapping the clique vector of a graph to the clique vector of the Barycentric refinement. The eigenvectors of its transpose produce integral geometric invariants for which Euler characteristic is one example.