Geometric Parter–Wiener, etc. theory

For real symmetric, or complex Hermitian, matrices whose graph is a tree, there is a well-developed (via several papers) theory about the possible multiplicities of the eigenvalues. It includes a theory of vertices whose removal increases a multiplicity (the “Parter–Wiener, etc. theory” and the “downer branch mechanism”), how to determine maximum multiplicity, lower bounds for the minimum number of distinct eigenvalues, etc. Remarkably, a great deal of this theory may be generalized to geometric multiplicities of general matrices over a field (with very different proofs). We show here what parts of this theory generalize, and, in the process, review the theory.