Rigidity expander graphs

Abstract

Jordán and Tanigawa recently introduced the $d$-dimensional algebraic connectivity $a_d(G)$ of a graph $G$. This is a quantitative measure of the $d$-dimensional rigidity of $G$ which generalizes the well-studied notion of spectral expansion of graphs. We present a new lower bound for $a_d(G)$ defined in terms of the spectral expansion of certain subgraphs of $G$ associated with a partition of its vertices into $d$ parts. In particular, we obtain a new sufficient condition for the rigidity of a graph $G$. As a first application, we prove the existence of an infinite family of $k$-regular $d$-rigidity-expander graphs for every $d\ge 2$ and $k\ge 2d+1$. Conjecturally, no such family of $2d$-regular graphs exists. Second, we show that $a_d(K_n)\ge \frac{1}{2}\lfloor \frac{n}{d}\rfloor$, which we conjecture to be essentially tight. In addition, we study the extremal values $a_d(G)$ attained if $G$ is a minimally $d$-rigid graph.