Minimum values of the second largest Q-eigenvalue

Abstract For a graph G , the signless Laplacian matrix Q ( G ) is defined as Q ( G ) = D ( G ) + A ( G ) , where A ( G ) is the adjacency matrix of G and D ( G ) the diagonal matrix whose main entries are the degrees of the vertices in G . The Q -spectrum of G is that of Q ( G ) . In the present paper, we are interested in the minimum values of the second largest signless Laplacian eigenvalue q 2 ( G ) of a connected graph G . We find the five smallest values of q 2 ( G ) over the set of connected graphs G with given order n . We also characterize the corresponding extremal graphs.