Spectral radius and clique partitions of graphs

Abstract

We give lower bounds on the size and total size of clique partitions of a graph in terms of its spectral radius and minimum degree, and derive a spectral upper bound for the maximum number of edge-disjoint t-cliques. The extremal graphs attaining the bounds are exactly the block graphs of Steiner 2-designs and the regular graphs with Kt-decompositions, respectively.