We study the structure of the Hilbert space of gauged matrix models with a global symmetry. In the first part of the paper, we focus on bosonic matrix models with $U(2)$ gauge group and $SO(d)$ global symmetry, and consider singlets under both the gauge and global symmetry. We show how such "double-gauged'' matrix models can be described in terms of a simpler $SO(3)$ single-matrix model. In the second part of the paper, we consider the so-called BMN subsector of the $\mathcal{N}=4$ $SU(N)$ super Yang-Mills theory, which is closely related to the BMN matrix model. Among the 1/16 BPS operators in this sector, "non-graviton'' operators were recently discovered, which are expected to relate to the microstates of supersymmetric $AdS_5$ black holes. We show that a double gauging of this model, where one projects onto $SU(3)_R$ $R$-symmetry singlets, considerably simplifies the analysis of the non-graviton spectrum. In particular, for low values of $N$, we show that (almost) all graviton operators project out of the spectrum, while important classes of non-graviton operators remain. In the $N=3$ case, we obtain a closed form expression for the superconformal index of singlet non-gravitons, which reveals structural features of their spectrum.

An $i$-packing in a graph $G$ is a set of vertices that are pairwise distance more than $i$ apart. A \emph{packing colouring} of $G$ is a partition $X=\{X_{1},X_{2},\ldots,X_{k}\}$ of $V(G)$ such that each colour class $X_{i}$ is an $i$-packing. The minimum order $k$ of a packing colouring is called the packing chromatic number of $G$, denoted by $\chi_{\rho}(G)$. In this paper we investigate the existence of trees $T$ for which there is only one packing colouring using $\chi_\rho(T)$ colours. For the case $\chi_\rho(T)=3$, we completely characterise all such trees. As a by-product we obtain sets of uniquely $3$-$\chi_\rho$-packable trees with monotone $\chi_{\rho}$-coloring and non-monotone $\chi_{\rho}$-coloring respectively.