On the Edge Derivative of the Normalized Laplacian with Applications to Kemeny's Constant

Abstract: In a connected graph, Kemeny's constant gives the expected time of a random walk from an arbitrary vertex $x$ to reach a randomly-chosen vertex $y$. Because of this, Kemeny's constant can be interpreted as a measure of how well a graph is connected. It is generally unknown how the addition or removal of edges affects Kemeny's constant. Inspired by the directional derivative of the normalized Laplacian, we derive the directional derivative of Kemeny's constant for several graph families. In addition, we find sharp bounds for the directional derivative of an eigenvalue of the normalized Laplacian and bounds for the directional derivative of Kemeny's constant.