# Spectral theory of graph Laplacian besides $\lambda_2$

Most of what I've seen about the spectral theory of the graph Laplacian concentrates on $\lambda_2$, the second-smallest eigenvalue. This eigenvalue contains information regarding the connectivity of the graph.

What can one learn from the rest of the eigenvalues and their associated eigenvectors? I'm not interested in special graphs -- e.g. regular graphs -- but large, messy graphs created from data.

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John, are you familiar with, say, U. von Luxburg (2007), A tutorial on spectral clustering, Statistics and Computing, vol. 17, no. 4? If I recall (though I don't have it handy), there is at least one chapter of D. Skillicorn, Understanding Complex Datasets: Data Mining with Matrix Decompositions, Chapman and Hall/CRC, 2007 that discusses some high-level aspects, as well. –  cardinal Jul 15 '13 at 18:50
Thanks! I am not familiar with those references. –  John D. Cook Jul 15 '13 at 18:57
For the more mathematical point of view, see the recent survey arxiv.org/abs/1111.2897 by X.-D. Zhang. A classical way to infer something from the whole ensemble of eigenvalues is to take the product $\frac{\lambda_{2} \ldots \lambda_{n}}{n}$ which counts the spanning trees... –  Felix Goldberg Jul 15 '13 at 19:02
"The third largest eigenvalue roughly measures how hard it is to cut the graph into distinct pieces." --Leanne R. Silvia & Gary E. Davis –  Joseph O'Rourke Jul 15 '13 at 19:07
I recently asked a related question: mathoverflow.net/questions/136434/… –  Paul Siegel Jul 15 '13 at 21:35