Relation between the row left rank of a quaternion unit gain graph and the rank of its underlying graph

Abstract

Let $\Phi=(G,U(\mathbb{Q}),\varphi)$ be a quaternion unit gain graph (or $U(\mathbb{Q})$-gain graph), where $G$ is the underlying graph of $\Phi$, $U(\mathbb{Q})=\{z\in \mathbb{Q}: |z|=1\}$ is the circle group, and $\varphi:\overrightarrow{E}\rightarrow U(\mathbb{Q})$ is the gain function such that $\varphi(e_{ij})=\varphi(e_{ji})^{-1}=\overline{\varphi(e_{ji})}$. Let $A(\Phi)$ be the adjacency matrix of $\Phi$ and $r(\Phi)$ be the row left rank of $\Phi$. In this paper, we prove that $-2c(G)\leq r(\Phi)-r(G)\leq 2c(G)$, where $r(G)$ and $c(G)$ are the rank and the dimension of cycle space of $G$, respectively. All corresponding extremal graphs are characterized. The results will generalize the corresponding results of signed graphs (Lu et al. [20] and Wang [33]), mixed graphs (Chen et al. [7]), and complex unit gain graphs (Lu et al. [21]).