The spectral radius of graphs without trees of diameter at most four

Abstract

Nikiforov (LAA, 2010) conjectured that for given integer $k$, any graph $G$ of sufficiently large order $n$ with spectral radius $\mu(G)\geq \mu(S_{n,k})$ contains all trees of order $2k+2$, unless $G=S_{n,k}$, where $S_{n,k}=K_k\vee \overline{K_{n-k}}$, the join of a complete graph of order $k$ and an empty graph of order $n-k$. In this paper, we show that the conjecture is true for trees of diameter at most four.