A short proof of a perturbation inequality for the spectral radius

Abstract

Let $G$ be a simple graph, and denote by $λ(G)$ its spectral radius. Sun and Das (2020) established that for any non-isolated vertex $v$ with degree $d(v)$, \[ λ(G)\leq \sqrt{λ(G-v)^2 + 2d(v) - 1}, \] which is a conjecture original posed by Guo, Wang, and Li (2019). Sun and Das's proof uses several tools from spectral graph theory. In this short note, we provide a concise and self-contained proof of this inequality using matrix analysis.