The Spark of Symmetric Matrices Described by a Graph

Abstract

We investigate the sparsity of null vectors of real symmetric matrices whose off-diagonal pattern of zero and nonzero entries is described by the adjacencies of a graph. We use the definition of the spark of a matrix, the smallest number of nonzero coordinates of any null vector, to define the spark of a graph as the smallest possible spark of a corresponding matrix. We study connections of graph spark to well-known concepts including minimum rank, forts, orthogonal representations, Parter and Fiedler vertices, and vertex connectivity.