On cospectrality of gain graphs

Abstract We define GG-cospectrality of two GG-gain graphs (Γ,ψ)\left(\Gamma ,\psi ) and (Γ′,ψ′)\left(\Gamma ^{\prime} ,\psi ^{\prime} ), proving that it is a switching isomorphism invariant. When GG is a finite group, we prove that GG-cospectrality is equivalent to cospectrality with respect to all unitary representations of GG. Moreover, we show that two connected gain graphs are switching equivalent if and only if the gains of their closed walks centered at an arbitrary vertex vv can be simultaneously conjugated. In particular, the number of switching equivalence classes on an underlying graph Γ\Gamma with nn vertices and mm edges, is equal to the number of simultaneous conjugacy classes of the group Gm−n+1{G}^{m-n+1}. We provide examples of GG-cospectral switching nonisomorphic graphs and we prove that any gain graph on a cycle is determined by its GG-spectrum. Moreover, we show that when GG is a finite cyclic group, the cospectrality with respect to a faithful irreducible representation implies the cospectrality with respect to any other faithful irreducible representation, and that the same assertion is false in general.