A lower bound for the smallest eigenvalue of a graph and an application to the associahedron graph

In this paper, we obtain a lower bound for the smallest eigenvalue of a regular graph containing many copies of a smaller fixed subgraph. This generalizes a result of Aharoni, Alon, and Berger in which the subgraph is a triangle. We apply our results to obtain a lower bound on the smallest eigenvalue of the associahedron graph, and we prove that this bound gives the correct order of magnitude of this eigenvalue. We also survey what is known regarding the second-largest eigenvalue of the associahedron graph.