The ancestral matrix of a rooted tree

Eric O.D. Andriantiana, Kenneth Dadedzi, Stephan Wagner

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Given a rooted tree T with leaves v 1 ,v 2 ,…,v n , we define the ancestral matrix C(T) of T to be the n×n matrix for which the entry in the i-th row, j-th column is the level (distance from the root) of the first common ancestor of v i and v j . We study properties of this matrix, in particular regarding its spectrum: we obtain several upper and lower bounds for the eigenvalues in terms of other tree parameters. We also find a combinatorial interpretation for the coefficients of the characteristic polynomial of C(T), and show that for d-ary trees, a specific value of the characteristic polynomial is independent of the precise shape of the tree.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)35-65
Number of pages31
JournalLinear Algebra and Its Applications
Volume575
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Aug 2019
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Ancestral matrix
  • Characteristic polynomial
  • Rooted tree
  • Spectral radius
  • Spectrum

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