Inequalities for the number of walks in graphs

We investigate the growth of the number w_k of walks of length k in undirected graphs as well as related inequalities. In the first part, we derive the inequalities w_2a+c · w_2(a+b)+c ≤ w_2a · w_2(a+b+c) and W_2a+c(υ,υ) · w_2(a+b)+c(υ,υ) ≤ w_2a(υ,υ) · w_2(a+b+c)(υ,υ) for the number w_k(υ,υ) of closed walks of length k starting at a given vertex v. The first is a direct implication of a matrix inequality by Marcus and Newman and generalizes two inequalities by Lagarias et al. and Dress & Gutman. We then use an inequality of Blakley and Dixon to show the inequality w_2ℓ+p^k p ≤ w_2ℓ+pk · w_2ℓ^k-1 which also generalizes the inequality by Dress and Gutman and also an inequality by Erdos and Simonovits. Both results can be translated directly into the corresponding forms using the higher order densities, which extends former results. In the second part, we provide a new family of lower bounds for the largest eigenvalue λ₁ of the adjacency matrix based on closed walks and apply the before mentioned inequalities to show monotonicity in this and a related family of lower bounds of Nikiforov. This leads to generalized upper bounds for the energy of graphs. In the third part, we demonstrate that a further natural generalization of the inequality w_2a+c · w_2(a+b)+c ≤ w_2a · w_2(a+6+c) is not valid for general graphs. We show that w_a+b · w_a+b+c ≤ w_a · w_a+2b+c does not hold even in very restricted cases like w₁ · w₂ ≤ w₀ · w₃ (i.e., d¯ · w₂ ≤ w₃) in the context of bipartite or cycle free graphs. In contrast, we show that surprisingly this inequality is always satisfied for trees and show how to construct worst-case instances (regarding the difference of both sides of the inequality) for a given degree sequence. We also provide a proof for the inequality w₁ · w₄ ≤ w₀ · w₅ (i.e., d¯·w₄ ≤ w₅) for trees and conclude with a corresponding conjecture for longer walks.