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We study the normal Cayley graphs $\mathrm{Cay}(S_n, C(n,I))$ on the symmetric group $S_n$, where $I\subseteq \{2,3,\ldots,n\}$ and $C(n,I)$ is the set of all cycles in $S_n$ with length in $I$. We prove that the strictly second largest eigenvalue of $\mathrm{Cay}(S_n,C(n,I))$ can only be achieved by at most four irreducible representations of $S_n$, and we determine further the multiplicity of this eigenvalue in several special cases. As a corollary, in the case when $I$ contains neither $n-1$ nor $n$ we know exactly when $\mathrm{Cay}(S_n, C(n,I))$ has the Aldous property, namely the strictly second largest eigenvalue is attained by the standard representation of $S_n$, and we obtain that $\mathrm{Cay}(S_n, C(n,I))$ does not have the Aldous property whenever $n \in I$. As another corollary of our main results, we prove a recent conjecture on the second largest eigenvalue of $\mathrm{Cay}(S_n, C(n,\{k\}))$ where $2 \le k \le n-2$., 27 pages

A pair of graphs $(\Gamma,\Sigma)$ is said to be stable if the full automorphism group of $\Gamma\times\Sigma$ is isomorphic to the product of the full automorphism groups of $\Gamma$ and $\Sigma$ and unstable otherwise, where $\Gamma\times\Sigma$ is the direct product of $\Gamma$ and $\Sigma$. In this paper, we reduce the study of the stability of any pair of regular graphs $(\Gamma,\Sigma)$ with coprime valencies and vertex-transitive $\Sigma$ to that of $(\Gamma,K_2)$. Since the latter is well studied in the literature, this enables us to determine the stability of any pair of regular graphs $(\Gamma,\Sigma)$ with coprime valencies in the case when $\Sigma$ is vertex-transitve and the stability of $(\Gamma,K_2)$ is known., Comment: 9 pages

We prove that every regular graph of valency at least four whose automorphism group contains a nilpotent subgroup acting transitively on the vertex set admits a nowhere-zero 3-flow., 15 pages

Tutte's 3-flow conjecture asserts that every $4$-edge-connected graph admits a nowhere-zero $3$-flow. We prove that this conjecture is true for every Cayley graph of valency at least four on any supersolvable group with a noncyclic Sylow $2$-subgroup and every Cayley graph of valency at least four on any group whose derived subgroup is of square-free order.

A radio labelling of a graph $G$ is a mapping $f : V(G) \rightarrow \{0, 1, 2,\ldots\}$ such that $|f(u)-f(v)| \geq diam(G) + 1 - d(u,v)$ for every pair of distinct vertices $u,v$ of $G$, where $diam(G)$ is the diameter of $G$ and $d(u,v)$ is the distance between $u$ and $v$ in $G$. The radio number $rn(G)$ of $G$ is the smallest integer $k$ such that $G$ admits a radio labelling $f$ with $\max\{f(v):v \in V(G)\} = k$. The weight of a tree $T$ from a vertex $v \in V(T)$ is the sum of the distances in $T$ from $v$ to all other vertices, and a vertex of $T$ achieving the minimum weight is called a weight center of $T$. It is known that any tree has one or two weight centers. A tree is called a two-branch tree if the removal of all its weight centers results in a forest with exactly two components. In this paper we obtain a sharp lower bound for the radio number of two-branch trees which improves a known lower bound for general trees. We also give a necessary and sufficient condition for this improved lower bound to be achieved. Using these results, we determine the radio number of two families of level-wise regular two-branch trees., 29 pages, 3 figures

Aldous' spectral gap conjecture states that the second largest eigenvalue of any connected Cayley graph on the symmetric group Sn with respect to a set of transpositions is achieved by the standard representation of Sn. This celebrated conjecture, which was proved in its general form in 2010, has inspired much interest in searching for other families of Cayley graphs on Sn with the property that the largest eigenvalue strictly smaller than the degree is attained by the standard representation of Sn. In this paper, we prove three results on normal Cayley graphs on Sn possessing this property for sufficiently large n, one of which can be viewed as a generalization of the "normal" case of Aldous' spectral gap conjecture., Comment: Final version published in European Journal of Combinatorics

Blowfish privacy is a recent generalisation of differential privacy that enables improved utility while maintaining privacy policies with semantic guarantees, a factor that has driven the popularity of differential privacy in computer science. This paper relates Blowfish privacy to an important measure of privacy loss of information channels from the communications theory community: min-entropy leakage. Symmetry in an input data neighbouring relation is central to known connections between differential privacy and min-entropy leakage. But while differential privacy exhibits strong symmetry, Blowfish neighbouring relations correspond to arbitrary simple graphs owing to the framework's flexible privacy policies. To bound the min-entropy leakage of Blowfish-private mechanisms we organise our analysis over symmetrical partitions corresponding to orbits of graph automorphism groups. A construction meeting our bound with asymptotic equality demonstrates tightness., 11 pages, 5 figures; accepted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theory

We start up the study of the stability of general graph pairs. This notion is a generalization of the concept of the stability of graphs. We say that a pair of graphs $(\Gamma,\Sigma)$ is stable if $Aut(\Gamma\times\Sigma) \cong Aut(\Gamma)\times Aut(\Sigma)$ and unstable otherwise, where $\Gamma\times\Sigma$ is the direct product of $\Gamma$ and $\Sigma$. An unstable graph pair $(\Gamma,\Sigma)$ is said to be a nontrivially unstable graph pair if $\Gamma$ and $\Sigma$ are connected coprime graphs, at least one of them is non-bipartite, and each of them has the property that different vertices have distinct neighbourhoods. We obtain necessary conditions for a pair of graphs to be stable. We also give a characterization of a pair of graphs $(\Gamma, \Sigma)$ to be nontrivially unstable in the case when both graphs are connected and regular with coprime valencies and $\Sigma$ is vertex-transitive. This characterization is given in terms of the $\Sigma$-automorphisms of $\Gamma$, which are a new concept introduced in this paper as a generalization of both automorphisms and two-fold automorphisms of a graph., Comment: 22 pages

Given graphs $G$ and $H$, the generalized Tur\'{a}n number ${\rm ex}(G,H)$ is the maximum number of edges in an $H$-free subgraph of $G$. In this paper, we obtain an asymptotic upper bound on ${\rm ex}(CT_n,C_{2l})$ for any $n \ge 3$ and $l\geq2$, where $C_{2l}$ is the cycle of length $2l$ and $CT_n$ is the complete transposition graph which is defined as the Cayley graph on the symmetric group ${\rm S}_n$ with respect to the set of all transpositions of ${\rm S}_n$., Comment: 16 pages, 1 figure

Perfect state transfer in graphs is a concept arising from quantum physics and quantum computing. Given a graph $G$ with adjacency matrix $A_G$, the transition matrix of $G$ with respect to $A_G$ is defined as $H_{A_{G}}(t) = \exp(-\mathrm{i}tA_{G})$, $t \in \mathbb{R},\ \mathrm{i}=\sqrt{-1}$. We say that perfect state transfer from vertex $u$ to vertex $v$ occurs in $G$ at time $\tau$ if $u \ne v$ and the modulus of the $(u,v)$-entry of $H_{A_G}(\tau)$ is equal to $1$. If the moduli of all diagonal entries of $H_{A_G}(\tau)$ are equal to $1$ for some $\tau$, then $G$ is called periodic with period $\tau$. In this paper we give a few sufficient conditions for NEPS of complete graphs to be periodic or exhibit perfect state transfer., Comment: This is the final version that will appear in Discrete Applied Mathematics

Let $V$ be an $n$-dimensional vector space over a finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$. In this paper we describe the structure of maximal non-trivial $t$-intersecting families of $k$-dimensional subspaces of $V$ with large size. We also determine the non-trivial $t$-intersecting families with maximum size. In the special case when $t=1$ our result gives rise to the well-known Hilton-Milner Theorem for vector spaces., Comment: 26 pages

A graph $\Gamma$ is called $(G, s)$-arc-transitive if $G \le \mathrm{Aut}(\Gamma)$ is transitive on the set of vertices of $\Gamma$ and the set of $s$-arcs of $\Gamma$, where for an integer $s \ge 1$ an $s$-arc of $\Gamma$ is a sequence of $s+1$ vertices $(v_0,v_1,\ldots,v_s)$ of $\Gamma$ such that $v_{i-1}$ and $v_i$ are adjacent for $1 \le i \le s$ and $v_{i-1}\ne v_{i+1}$ for $1 \le i \le s-1$. $\Gamma$ is called 2-transitive if it is $(\mathrm{Aut}(\Gamma), 2)$-arc-transitive but not $(\mathrm{Aut}(\Gamma), 3)$-arc-transitive. A Cayley graph $\Gamma$ of a group $G$ is called normal if $G$ is normal in $\mathrm{Aut}(\Gamma)$ and non-normal otherwise. It was proved by X. G. Fang, C. H. Li and M. Y. Xu that if $\Gamma$ is a tetravalent 2-transitive Cayley graph of a finite simple group $G$, then either $\Gamma$ is normal or $G$ is one of the groups $\mathrm{PSL}_2(11)$, $M_{11}$, $M_{23}$ and $A_{11}$. However, it was unknown whether $\Gamma$ is normal when $G$ is one of these four groups. In the present paper we answer this question by proving that among these four groups only $M_{11}$ produces connected tetravalent 2-transitive non-normal Cayley graphs. We prove further that there are exactly two such graphs which are non-isomorphic and both determined in the paper. As a consequence, the automorphism group of any connected tetravalent 2-transitive Cayley graph of any finite simple group is determined., Comment: Final version published in Bulletin of the Australian Mathematical Society

A retract of a graph $\Gamma$ is an induced subgraph $\Psi$ of $\Gamma$ such that there exists a homomorphism from $\Gamma$ to $\Psi$ whose restriction to $\Psi$ is the identity map. A graph is a core if it has no nontrivial retracts. In general, the minimal retracts of a graph are cores and are unique up to isomorphism; they are called the core of the graph. A graph $\Gamma$ is $G$-symmetric if $G$ is a subgroup of the automorphism group of $\Gamma$ that is transitive on the vertex set and also transitive on the set of ordered pairs of adjacent vertices. If in addition the vertex set of $\Gamma$ admits a nontrivial partition that is preserved by $G$, then $\Gamma$ is an imprimitive $G$-symmetric graph. In this paper cores of imprimitive symmetric graphs $\Gamma$ of order a product of two distinct primes are studied. In many cases the core of $\Gamma$ is determined completely. In other cases it is proved that either $\Gamma$ is a core or its core is isomorphic to one of two graphs, and conditions on when each of these possibilities occurs is given.

Unitary graphs are arc-transitive graphs with vertices the flags of Hermitian unitals and edges defined by certain elements of the underlying finite fields. They played a significant role in a recent classification of a class of arc-transitive graphs that admit an automorphism group acting imprimitively on the vertices. In this paper we prove that all unitary graphs are connected of diameter two and girth three. Based on this we obtain, for any prime power $q > 2$, a lower bound of order $O(\Delta^{5/3})$ on the maximum number of vertices in an arc-transitive graph of degree $\Delta = q(q^2-1)$ and diameter two.

A signed graph is a graph with a positive or negative sign on each edge. Regarding each edge as two half edges, an orientation of a signed graph is an assignment of a direction to each of its half edges such that the two half edges of a positive edge receive the same direction and that of a negative edge receive opposite directions. A signed graph with such an orientation is called a bidirected graph. A nowhere-zero $k$-flow of a bidirected graph is an assignment of an integer from $\{-(k-1), \ldots, -1, 1, \ldots, (k-1)\}$ to each of its half edges such that Kirchhoff's law is respected, that is, the total incoming flow is equal to the total outgoing flow at each vertex. A signed graph is said to admit a nowhere-zero $k$-flow if it has an orientation such that the corresponding bidirected graph admits a nowhere-zero $k$-flow. It was conjectured by Bouchet that every signed graph admitting a nowhere-zero $k$-flow for some integer $k \ge 2$ admits a nowhere-zero 6-flow. In this paper we prove that every $3$-edge-connected signed graph admitting a nowhere-zero $k$-flow for some $k$ admits a nowhere-zero $9$-flow., Comment: This paper has been withdrawn by the authors due to an incomplete proof

This paper establishes connections between the structure of a semigroup and the minimum spans of distance labellings of its Cayley graphs. We show that certain general restrictions on the minimum spans are equivalent to the semigroup being combinatorial, and that other restrictions are equivalent to the semigroup being a right zero band. We obtain a description of the structure of all semigroups $S$ and their subsets $C$ such that $\Cay(S,C)$ is a disjoint union of complete graphs, and show that this description is also equivalent to several restrictions on the minimum span of $\Cay(S,C)$. We then describe all graphs with minimum spans satisfying the same restrictions, and give examples to show that a fairly straightforward upper bound for the minimum spans of the underlying undirected graphs of Cayley graphs turns out to be sharp even for the class of combinatorial semigroups.

In a facility game one or more facilities are placed in a metric space to serve a set of selfish agents whose addresses are their private information. In a classical facility game, each agent wants to be as close to a facility as possible, and the cost of an agent can be defined as the distance between her location and the closest facility. In an obnoxious facility game, each agent wants to be far away from all facilities, and her utility is the distance from her location to the facility set. The objective of each agent is to minimize her cost or maximize her utility. An agent may lie if, by doing so, more benefit can be obtained. We are interested in social choice mechanisms that do not utilize payments. The game designer aims at a mechanism that is strategy-proof, in the sense that any agent cannot benefit by misreporting her address, or, even better, group strategy-proof, in the sense that any coalition of agents cannot all benefit by lying. Meanwhile, it is desirable to have the mechanism to be approximately optimal with respect to a chosen objective function. Several models for such approximation mechanism design without money for facility games have been proposed. In this paper we briefly review these models and related results for both deterministic and randomized mechanisms, and meanwhile we present a general framework for approximation mechanism design without money for facility games.

The orbit problem is at the heart of symmetry reduction methods for model checking concurrent systems. It asks whether two given configurations in a concurrent system (represented as finite strings over some finite alphabet) are in the same orbit with respect to a given finite permutation group (represented by their generators) acting on this set of configurations by permuting indices. It is known that the problem is in general as hard as the graph isomorphism problem, whose precise complexity (whether it is solvable in polynomial-time) is a long-standing open problem. In this paper, we consider the restriction of the orbit problem when the permutation group is cyclic (i.e. generated by a single permutation), an important restriction of the problem. It is known that this subproblem is solvable in polynomial-time. Our main result is a linear-time algorithm for this subproblem., Accepted in Acta Informatica in Nov 2015

We give two lower bounds on the largest order of an arc-transitive graph of diameter two and a given degree., Comment: This is the version published in: Bull. of the ICA 68 (2013), 102-105

This paper shows that, for every unit interval graph, there is a labelling which is simultaneously optimal for the following seven graph labelling problems: bandwidth, cyclic bandwidth, profile, fill-in, cutwidth, modified cutwidth, and bandwidth sum(linear arrangement).

A Frobenius group is a transitive but not regular permutation group such that only the identity element can fix two points. A finite Frobenius group can be expressed as $G = K \rtimes H$ with $K$ a nilpotent normal subgroup. A first-kind $G$-Frobenius graph is a Cayley graph on $K$ with connection set $S$ an $H$-orbit on $K$ generating $K$, where $H$ is of even order or $S$ consists of involutions. We classify all 6-valent first-kind Frobenius circulant graphs such that the underlying kernel $K$ is cyclic. We give optimal gossiping and routing algorithms for such a circulant and compute its forwarding indices, Wiener indices and minimum gossip time. We also prove that its broadcasting time is equal to its diameter plus two or three. We prove that all 6-valent first-kind Frobenius circulants with cyclic kernels are Eisenstein-Jacobi graphs, the latter being Cayley graphs on quotient rings of the ring of Eisenstein-Jacobi integers. We also prove that larger Eisenstein-Jacobi graphs can be constructed from smaller ones as topological covers, and a similar result holds for 6-valent first-kind Frobenius circulants. As a corollary any Eisenstein-Jacobi graph with order congruent to 1 modulo 6 and underlying Eisenstein-Jacobi integer not an associate of a real integer, is a cover of a 6-valent first-kind Frobenius circulant. A distributed real-time computing architecture known as HARTS or hexagonal mesh is a special 6-valent first-kind Frobenius circulant., This is the version to be published in European Journal of Combinatorics

It is conjectured that a 2(k + 1)-connected graph of order p contains k + 1 pairwise disjoint Hamiltonian cycles if no two of its vertices that have degree less than 1/2 + 2k are distance two apart. This is proved in detail for k = 1. Similar arguments establish the conjecture for k = 2. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Let h≥1 be an integer. An L(h,1,1)-labelling of a (finite or infinite) graph is an assignment of nonnegative integers (labels) to its vertices such that adjacent vertices receive labels with difference at least h, and vertices distance 2 or 3 apart receive distinct labels. The span of such a labelling is the difference between the maximum and minimum labels used, and the minimum span over all L(h,1,1)-labellings is called the λh,1,1-number of the graph. We prove that, for any integer h≥1 and any finite tree T of diameter at least 3 or infinite tree T of finite maximum degree, max{maxuv∈E(T)min{d(u),d(v)}+h−1,Δ2(T)−1}≤λh,1,1(T)≤Δ2(T)+h−1, and both lower and upper bounds are attainable, where Δ2(T) is the maximum total degree of two adjacent vertices. Moreover, if h is less than or equal to the minimum degree of a non-pendant vertex of T, then λh,1,1(T)≤Δ2(T)+h−2. In particular, Δ2(T)−1≤λ2,1,1(T)≤Δ2(T). Furthermore, if T is a caterpillar and h≥2, then max{maxuv∈E(T)min{d(u),d(v)}+h−1,Δ2(T)−1}≤λh,1,1(T)≤Δ2(T)+h−2 with both lower and upper bounds achievable.