Schur reduction of trees and extremal entries of the Fiedler vector

Abstract

We study the eigenvectors of Laplacian matrices of trees. The Laplacian matrix is reduced to a tridiagonal matrix using the Schur complement. This preserves the eigenvectors and allows us to provide fomulas for the ratio of eigenvector entries. We also obtain bounds on the ratio of eigenvector entries along a path in terms of the eigenvalue and Perron values. The results are then applied to the Fiedler vector. Here we locate the extremal entries of the Fiedler vector and study classes of graphs such that the extremal entries can be found at the end points of the longest path.