Spectral gaps of random graphs and applications

Abstract: We study the spectral gap of the Erd\H{o}s--R\'enyi random graph through the connectivity threshold. In particular, we show that for any fixed $\delta > 0$ if $$p \ge \frac{(1/2 + \delta) \log n}{n},$$ then the normalized graph Laplacian of an Erd\H{o}s--R\'enyi graph has all of its nonzero eigenvalues tightly concentrated around $1$. We estimate both the decay rate of the spectral gap to $1$ and the failure probability, up to a constant factor. We also show that the $1/2$ in the above is optimal, and that if $p = \frac{c \log n}{n}$ for $c < 1/2,$ then there are eigenvalues of the Laplacian restricted to the giant component that are separated from $1.$ We then describe several applications of our spectral gap results to stochastic topology and geometric group theory. These all depend on Garland's "p-adic curvature" method, a kind of spectral geometry for simplicial complexes. These can all be considered to be high-dimensional expander properties.