Localization of spectral Turán-type theorems

Abstract

Let $G$ be a graph, and let $v$ and $e$ be a vertex and an edge of $G$, respectively. Define $c(v)$ (resp. $c(e)$) to be the order of the largest clique in $G$ containing $v$ (resp. $e$). Denote the adjacency eigenvalues of $G$ by $λ_1 \ge \cdots \ge λ_n$. We study localized refinements of spectral Turán-type theorems by replacing global parameters such as the clique number $ω(G)$, size $m$ and order $n$ of $G$ with local quantities $c(v)$ and $c(e)$. Motivated by a conjecture of Elphick, Linz and Wocjan (2024), we first propose a vertex-localized strengthening of Wilf's inequality: \[ \sqrt{s^{+}(G)} \le \sum_{v\in V(G)}\left(1-\frac{1}{c(v)}\right), \] where $s^+(G) = \sum_{λ_i > 0}λ_i^2$. Inspired by the Bollobás-Nikiforov conjecture (2007) on the first two eigenvalues, we then introduce an edge-localized analogue: \[λ_1^2(G) + λ_2^2(G) \le \sum_{e\in E(G)} 2\left(1-\frac{1}{c(e)}\right).\] As evidence of their validity, we verify the above conjectures for diamond-free graphs and random graphs. We also propose strengthening of the spectral versions of the Erdős, Stone and Simonovits Theorem by replacing the spectral radius with $\sqrt{s^{+}(G)}$ and establish it for all $F$-free graphs with $χ(F)=3$. A key ingredient in our proofs is a general upper bound relating $\sqrt{s^{+}(G)}$ to the triangle count $t(G)$. Finally, we prove a localized version of Nikiforov's walk inequality and conjecture a stronger localized version. These results contribute to the broader program of localizing spectral extremal inequalities.