{"paper":{"title":"The Equality Cases for the Grone-Merris-Bai Theorem","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"math.CO","authors_text":"Dongxiu Cai, Jia Yang, Xiao-Dong Zhang, Zhengbo Chen","submitted_at":"2026-07-26T10:24:47Z","abstract_excerpt":"The Grone--Merris inequality, conjectured by Grone and Merris~(1994) and first proved by Bai~(2011), states that for every graph $G$ of order $n$ and every $1\\le k\\le n$, $\\sum_{i=1}^k\\lambda_i(G)\\le\\sum_{i=1}^k d_i^*(G)$, where $\\lambda_1\\ge\\cdots\\ge\\lambda_n$ are the Laplacian eigenvalues and $d_1^*\\ge\\cdots\\ge d_n^*$ is the conjugate degree sequence. In this paper we determine exactly when equality holds. Using the split-graph trace inequality developed by Kothari and Tudose~(2026) in their proof of Brouwer's Laplacian conjecture---which relies on Bai's theorem and also establishes the equi"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2607.23583","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2607.23583/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}