Preface

Summary

This book has been written primarily as an introductory text for graduate students interested in algebraic graph theory and related areas. It is also intended to be of use to mathematicians working in graph theory and combinatorics, to chemists who are interested in quantum chemistry, and in part to physicists, computer scientists and electrical engineers using the theory of graph spectra in their work. The book is almost entirely self-contained; only a little familiarity with graph theory and linear algebra is assumed.

In addition to more recent developments, the book includes an up-to-date treatment of most of the topics covered in Spectra of Graphs by D. Cvetković, M. Doob and H. Sachs [CvDSa], where spectral graph theory was characterized as follows:

The theory of graph spectra can, in a way, be considered as an attempt to utilize linear algebra including, in particular, the well-developed theory of matrices, for the purposes of graph theory and its applications. However, that does not mean that the theory of graph spectra can be reduced to the theory of matrices; on the contrary, it has its own characteristic features and specific ways of reasoning fully justifying it to be treated as a theory in its own right.