Upper bound on the $k$-th eigenvalue of a graph

Abstract

We prove a general upper bound on the $k$-th adjacency eigenvalue of a graph. For $k\ge 2$, we show that \[ \lambda_k(G)\le \frac{(k-2)\sqrt{k+1}+2}{2k(k-1)}\,n-1 \] for every graph $G$ on $n$ vertices. We build on a recent approach that addresses the case $k=3$ and generalize the upper bound for all $k \geq 3$ by using the positivity of Gegenbauer polynomials. The upper bound is tight for $k \in \{2,3,4,8,24\}$. We also highlight the close relation of $\lambda_k(G)$ to questions about equiangular lines.