Trees with a large Laplacian eigenvalue multiplicity

Abstract

In this paper, we study the multiplicity of the Laplacian eigenvalues of trees. It is known that for trees, integer Laplacian eigenvalues larger than $1$ are simple and also the multiplicity of Laplacian eigenvalue $1$ has been well studied before. Here we consider the multiplicities of the other (non-integral) Laplacian eigenvalues. We give an upper bound and determine the trees of order $n$ that have a multiplicity that is close to the upper bound $\frac{n-3}{2}$, and emphasize the particular role of the algebraic connectivity.