2026/07/25 by Saieed Akbari, Keivan Mallahi-Karai
Mathematics · #math.CO
Consider the tree obtained by attaching a leaf to the third vertex of a path with n-1 vertices. In this note, we prove that the characteristic polynomial of this tree is irreducible when n belongs to certain arithmetic progressions modulo 30. As a result there are infinitely many pairwise non-isomorphic trees with an irreducible the characteristic polynomial. Our proof combines several number-theoretic arguments with a result of Gross, Hironaka, and McMullen [GHM09] concerning the cyclotomic factors of the Coxeter polynomials associated with the diagrams En. This resolves affirmatively a conjecture of Akbari, Kumar, Mohar and Pragada.