Assigned rational functions of a rooted tree

Abstract

We investigate the spectral properties of rooted trees with the intention of improving the currently existing results that deal with this matter. The concept of an assigned rational function is recursively defined for each vertex of a rooted tree. Afterwards, two mathematical formulas are given which show how the characteristic polynomials of the adjacency and Laplacian matrix can be represented as products of the aforementioned rational functions. In order to demonstrate their general use case scenario, the obtained formulas are subsequently implemented on balanced trees, with a special focus on the Bethe trees. In the end, some of the previously derived results are used in order to construct a tree merging procedure which preserves the spectra of all of the starting trees.