A general formula for walk determinants of rooted products with applications to DGS-graph constructions

Abstract: For an $n$-vertex graph $G$, and a rooted graph $H^{(v)}$ with $v$ as the root, the rooted product graph $G\circ H^{(v)}$ is obtained from $G$ and $n$ copies of $H$ by identifying the root of the $i$th copy of $H$ with the $i$th vertex of $G$ for each $i$. As a refinement of the controllability criterion of $G\circ H^{(v)}$ obtained recently by Shan and Liu (2025), we obtain an explicit formula for the determinant of the walk matrix of $G\circ H^{(v)}$. Furthermore, for an important family of graphs $\mathcal{F}$ that are determined by their generalized spectrum (DGS), we introduce the concept of $\mathcal{F}$-preservers and provide a sufficient condition for a rooted graph to be an $\mathcal{F}$-preserver. A list of $\mathcal{F}$-preservers of small order is provided, which leads to many new infinite families of DGS-graphs using rooted products.