Concrete method for recovering the Euler characteristic of quantum graphs

Abstract

Trace formulas play a central role in the study of spectral geometry and in particular of quantum graphs. The basis of our work is the result by Kurasov which links the Euler characteristic $\chi$ of metric graphs to the spectrum of their standard Laplacian. These ideas were shown to be applicable even in an experimental context where only a finite number of eigenvalues from a physical realization of quantum graph can be measured. In the present work we analyse sufficient hypotheses which guarantee the successful recovery of $\chi$. We also study how to improve the efficiency of the method and in particular how to minimise the number of eigenvalues required. Finally, we compare our findings with numerical examples---surprisingly, just a few dozens of eigenvalues can be enough.