On the Local Geometry of Graphs in Terms of Their Spectra

Abstract

In this paper we consider the relation between the spectrum and the number of short cycles in large graphs. Suppose $G_1, G_2, G_3, \ldots$ is a sequence of finite and connected graphs that share a common universal cover $T$ and such that the proportion of eigenvalues of $G_n$ that lie within the support of the spectrum of $T$ tends to 1 in the large $n$ limit. This is a weak notion of being Ramanujan. We prove such a sequence of graphs is asymptotically locally tree-like. This is deduced by way of an analogous theorem proved for certain infinite sofic graphs and unimodular networks, which extends results for regular graphs and certain infinite Cayley graphs.