  Many natural and social systems develop complex networks, that are usually
modelled as random graphs. The eigenvalue spectrum of these graphs provides
information about their structural properties. While the semi-circle law is
known to describe the spectral density of uncorrelated random graphs, much less
is known about the eigenvalues of real-world graphs, describing such complex
systems as the Internet, metabolic pathways, networks of power stations,
scientific collaborations or movie actors, which are inherently correlated and
usually very sparse. An important limitation in addressing the spectra of these
systems is that the numerical determination of the spectra for systems with
more than a few thousand nodes is prohibitively time and memory consuming.
Making use of recent advances in algorithms for spectral characterization, here
we develop new methods to determine the eigenvalues of networks comparable in
size to real systems, obtaining several surprising results on the spectra of
adjacency matrices corresponding to models of real-world graphs. We find that
when the number of links grows as the number of nodes, the spectral density of
uncorrelated random graphs does not converge to the semi-circle law.
Furthermore, the spectral densities of real-world graphs have specific features
depending on the details of the corresponding models. In particular, scale-free
graphs develop a triangle-like spectral density with a power law tail, while
small-world graphs have a complex spectral density function consisting of
several sharp peaks. These and further results indicate that the spectra of
correlated graphs represent a practical tool for graph classification and can
provide useful insight into the relevant structural properties of real
networks.
