Laplacian Spectral Determination of Path-Friendship Graphs

Abstract: A graph $G$ is said to be determined by the spectrum of its Laplacian matrix (DLS) if every graph with the same spectrum is isomorphic to $G$. van Dam and Haemers (2003) conjectured that almost all graphs have this property, but that is known to be the case only for a very few families. In some papers it is proved that the friendship graphs and starlike trees are DLS. If a friendship graph and a starlike tree are joined by merging their vertices of degree greater than 2, then the resulting graph is called a path-friendship graph. In this paper, it is proved that the path-friendship graphs are also DLS.