If Γ is a finite group and G a graph such that Aut(G) ≡ Γ acts regularly on V(G), then we say that G is a graphical regular representation (GRR) of Γ. The question asking which finite groups have at least one GRR was an important question in algebraic graph theory and it was completely solved as a result of work done by several researchers. However, it remains a challenge to discern whether a group known to have GRRs has GRRs with specific properties, such as being trivalent. In this paper, we shall be deriving simple conditions on the parameters of a subset of a dihedral group for easily constructing trivalent graphical regular representations (GRR) of the group. Specifically, we shall prove the following:
Let n be an odd integer greater than 5 and let r, s, and t be integers less than n such that the difference of any two of them is relatively prime to n. If 3r – 2s = t (mod n), then Cay(Dn, {abr, abs, abt}) is a GRR of Dn.
We will also be looking at very convenient corollaries of this result. But another main aim of this paper is to show how a simple use of Schur rings can be used to derive such results. This paper therefore also serves as a review of some basic results about Schur rings which we feel should be among the standard armory of an algebraic graph theorist.
Definition 1 (Graphical Regular Representations).
Let be a finite group
and let be a graph. If acts
regularly on , then we say that
is a graphical regular
representation (GRR) of .
The question asking which finite groups have at least one GRR has
been completely solved [1-8].
Specifically:
The only abelian groups which have a GRR are for .
Except for generalised dicyclic groups and a finite number of
known groups, all non-abelian groups have a GRR.
However, it remains a challenge to discern whether a group known to
have GRRs has GRRs with specific properties, such as being trivalent. It
is well-known, by means of Frucht’s Theorem [9], that every group is isomorphic to the
automorphism group of some trivalent graph but it is not guaranteed that
this graph is a GRR. Furthermore, it is not known how one can easily
construct such GRRs when they do exist.
Significant results in this vein are given in [10-12].
Coxeter, Frucht, and Powers had given a thorough treatment of
trivalent GRRs in their book Zero-Symmetric Graphs: Trivalent
Graphical Representations of Groups [13] which shows how interesting such GRRs can
be.
In Section 2 we will be using the foundations laid out in this
section to produce infinite families of trivalent GRRs for certain
dihedral groups. Our aim is to show that even a simple use of Schur
rings can be used to derive results about restricted GRRs. Reference
[14] is a very friendly
introduction to Schur rings.
Definition 2 (Cayley graphs). The Cayley
graph of a group is the
graph, denoted by , whose vertex-set is and two vertices and are adjacent if where and is a subset of such that , generates , and . We call the set the connecting set of the
Cayley graph.
In dealing with Schur rings we might encounter Cayley graphs
where the condition is not
satisfied. We refer to such graphs as Cayley digraphs.
It is an easy and well-known corollary of Sabidussi’s Theorem [15] that if a graph is a GRR of a group , then it isomorphic to a Cayley
graph of . Therefore, if is trivalent then the connecting set
must either consist of three elements all of order 2 or else it must
consist of one element and its
inverse and one other
element of order 2.
1.1. Schur rings
We now present an introduction to Schur rings which is just
sufficient for our purposes.
Definition 3 (Group Rings). Let be a finite group. Then the
group ring consists of all formal
linear combinations where each is in . Addition and multiplication
in is carried
out in the natural way. If ,
then the element of is denoted by and it is said to be a
simple quantity of .
Definition 4 (Schur Rings). A subring of the group ring is called a Schur ring
or an -ring over , of rank , if the following conditions
hold:
is closed
under addition and multiplication including multiplication by elements
of from the left (i.e.
is a -module).
Simple quantities
exist in such that
every element
has a unique representation:
where the are
integers.
.
, that is,
is a partition of .
For every there exists a such
that .
We call the set of simple quantities the
basis of the Schur ring and we denote it by . Each simple
quantity of the
basis is referred to as a basis element of the Schur ring.
Sometimes we need to refer to the set which we call a basic set.
If and is a basis element
of , then we say the
is isolated or a
singleton in . If the basis of a Schur ring is completely made up of
singletons then we say that the Schur ring is trivial.
We say a Schur ring is larger than another if its basic sets
form a partition which is finer than the partition formed by the other’s
basic sets. The “largest” Schur ring of a group is therefore the Schur ring whose
basic sets form the finest possible partition of , that is, the basic sets are all
singletons. Similarly, we say a Schur ring is smaller than
another if its basic sets form a partition which is coarser than the
partition formed by the other’s basic sets. The “smallest” Schur ring is
therefore the one which gives the coarsest partition, with basic sets
and .
The example below deals with a special kind of Schur ring known as a
Schur ring
[16,17].
Example 1. Let be a group of automorphisms of the
group . Then the orbits of
under the action of form the basic sets of a Schur
ring over .
In particular, the conjugacy classes of form the basic sets of a Schur
ring over . The basis
elements in this case would here be the well-known “class sums” which
are very important in linear representations of groups.
Because of closure under multiplication, the product of two linear
combinations of
must also be a linear combination of these simple quantities. Therefore
we can make the following definition:
Definition 5 (Structure Constants). Let and be two basis elements of
an r-rank Schur ring .
For all values
there exist non-negative integers called structure
constants, such that
We shall soon see that the structure constants have a very nice graph
theoretic interpretation.
Example 2. Let be the cyclic group . The
following simple quantities are the basic sets of a Schur ring of :
One can verify that, if we let , and , then, , therefore while all the other .
1.2 Graph Theoretic
Interpretation
Definition 6 (Basic Cayley Graphs). Let be a Schur ring of a group
. We can construct a Cayley
(di)graph
for each of the basic sets of
. These are called the
basic Cayley graphs associated with the Schur ring.
The basic Cayley graphs associated with the Schur ring in the
previous example are as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1 The Basic Cayley Graphs Associated with
the Schur Ring in Example 1
We can now give an interpretation to the structure constants : pick any edge (or
arc in the case of a Cayley digraph) in and count how many
walks there are from to by first passing through an edge/arc in
followed by
an edge/arc in . This is the value of .
One can verify here that and , for example.
1.3 The Colour Graph
Basic Cayley graphs such as the ones in Figure 1 can be superimposed on the
vertex-set consisting of the elements of with each one having its
edges/arcs coloured a different colour. This gives a colouring of the
arc-set of the complete graph where the convention is to represent two
arcs which happen to
have the same colour represented as an edge of that colour. Figure 2 shows the previous set of basic
Cayley graphs without the loops.
Figure 2 The Colour Graph for the Schur Ring in
Example 1
As we did above, we can verify here from the colour graph that ,
for example.
The adjacency matrices of the basic Cayley (di)graphs form what is
called a coherent configuration.
1.4 Automorphism Groups of Schur
rings
Definition 7 (Automorphisms of Schur Rings). The
automorphism group of a Schur ring is defined to be the intersection of
all automorphism groups of the basic Cayley graphs of the Schur ring.
For any Schur ring we
will denote its automorphism group as .
The smallest (coarsest) Schur ring has the largest automorphism
group, that is, the symmetric group , where is the order of the group. The largest
Schur ring has the smallest automorphism group, that is, the regular
action of the group on itself.
Let be a subset of the group
. Then is the
smallest (coarsest) Schur ring of containing .
Theorem 1[18] and Theorem 2 [19] will be very important going
forward.
Theorem 1. .
Theorem 2. If is
trivial then is a GRR
of .
1.5 Combining Results
Our recipe for finding GRRs for a group is simple. Find (with ) such that is
trivial. Theorem 2 then gives us that
since is trivial then is a GRR of .
Our work in Section 2 is focused on identifying properties of a
connecting set of a dihedral group which imply that the Cayley graph of
that set must be a GRR. By selecting a connecting set consisting of
three elements of order 2, we will also be producing trivalent graphs.
One last result about Schur rings will be our main computational tool
going forward. A proof is given in [14].
Theorem 3 (Schur-Wielandt Principle). Let be an element of a
Schur ring of a group
. Then, for any integer , the sum is also in .
So, this result is saying, for example, that if is in , then so are , , and .
We finish off this section with a concrete example of how we use
these results to show that a particular Cayley graph is a GRR using some
simple GAP [20] code to carry out the algebraic
calculations.
Example 3. Let be the dihedral group
We show that where is a GRR of .
We first define in GAP the group ring of the dihedral group
, with the generators of defined as elements of the group
ring.
gap> (a+a*b+a*b^3+b+b^6)^2;
(5)*<identity> of ...+
(4)*f1*f2^2+
(2)*f1+(2)*f1*f2+(2)*f2^2+(2)*f1*f2^4+(2)*f2^5+(2)*f1*f2^6+
(1)*f2^3++(1)*f2+(1)*f2^4+(1)*f2^6+
By computing in
and using the
Schur-Wielandt Principle, we obtain that and are in . Therefore, is also in .
But . Since both and must both be sums of basis
elements and basis elements are disjoint, it follow that either or is a basis element of . This is
because all the other summands in also appear in . In the case of the former, it is
clear that this implies that every power of is an isolated element in the basis
of the Schur ring. But by squaring the latter, we see that is a isolated basis element of the
Schur ring and since the order of
is prime, is a generating
element meaning every power of
is an isolated basis element. Therefore we definitely have that all the
powers of are isolated elements
in the basis of the Schur ring. Multiplying by repeatedly it follows that so is . Therefore is the finest Schur ring on
with all singleton sets as
basic sets.
Therefore .
We finish this section with the following simple observation.
Observation 4. Let be an element of the Schur
ring . Then some
partition of (which could be
itself) gives a set of basis
elements in .
2. Constructing
Trivalent GRRs for Dihedral Groups
At its core, our work in Section 2 is conceptually identical to the
final example in the previous section, but rather than using specific
values for the powers of group elements, we generalise the example by
using parametric variables.
This will be our main result:
Theorem 5. Let be an odd integer greater than 5 and
let , , and be integers less than such that the difference of any two of
them is relatively prime to . If
, then is
a GRR of .
Which gives us the tidy corollary:
Corollary 1. Let be an odd integer with its smallest
prime factor being greater than 5
and let , , and be distinct integers less than . If then is a GRR of .
This will allow us to easily make trivalent GRRs for several dihedral
groups just by selecting appropriate values for ,
and . It will be especially useful
for those dihedral groups of order equal to twice a prime greater than 5
(dihedral groups ), where all we
would need would be , , and such that .
To prove Theorem 5 however, we will need the help of the
following two lemmas:
Lemma 1. Let be an element of such that has odd order and let and be two integers such that is relatively prime to . If is an element of some
then is also
an element of that same for all
integers relatively prime to
.
Proof. Since is closed then if
is in so is . We can use
binomial expansion to expand the latter:
This can be re-written as . However, is of order and so . Therefore, the sum
can once more be rewritten as .
It is well known that if, and only if, is the generator of a cyclic group
then where is coprime to the order of is a generator for the same group
and therefore has the same order. Since is relatively prime to the order of then the summation must include exactly distinct terms. In other words every
power of appears in
that sum once and only once. Therefore, the coefficient of every is exactly . Moreover, we observe that
and
so we can re-write this summation as .
Since every value of is unique for then either
occurs as a
singleton in or occurs in
due
to the Schur-Wielandt principle.
However, in the cases where is
relatively prime to , would also be relatively prime to
, and so can generate every power
of . This would mean that,
should be a
singleton element of the basis, then every power of would also be a singleton element
of the basis. However, is an element of , and so
this would imply a contradiction. Therefore for every which is
relatively prime to , we have
.
Let us recapitulate that at this point we have shown that if is the order of some , and and are two integers such that is relatively prime to and is in then
is
in and that
those pairs of summands of the form appear
as a basis element in when
is relatively prime to . All that is left to show is that every
number less than which is also
relatively prime to it appears in the expression as a power of (or, equivalently, a value of
) and this will complete the
proof.
We re-write as where
is the set mod .
However, we now note that the set is in fact equivalent to the set of
integers less than which also
divide . This is because the
modulo multiplication of by any
number relatively prime to can be
represented as a permutation of a set unto itself, which is a bijection.
Moreover the product of two numbers both relatively prime to is again relatively prime to , which means the subset of which consists only of integers
relatively prime to is fixed
under such a bijection.
Therefore:
Obviously every number less than which is less relatively prime to it
appears as a power of on the
right hand side above, meaning that those powers of also appear on the left hand side
above.
This means that every such that is relatively prime to appears in the summation and as we stated above, this
completes the proof.
Lemma 2. Let be an odd integer and let and be the generators of the group with orders 2 and respectively. Also let ,
and be unique integers less than
or equal to . The Schur ring must be trivial if the following
are true:
The absolute value of the difference between any two of ,
and is relatively prime to .
The sum of any two of ,
and is not equal to twice the third
variable taken modulo .
Proof. We know from (1) that . But is in . This therefore leaves only two
possibilities:
are
all isolated in , or,
Without loss of generality, is in while is isolated.
The first possibility implies that is trivial. This is because any
three involutions of generate
the whole group, and so three isolated elements in the Schur ring’s
basis would imply that the whole basis is made up of singletons. So if
the first possibility is true, we are done. Let us turn our attention to
the second possibility.
This gives us that is in . By expanding the brackets we get
that is in . If and occur as singletons in the basis
then it would imply that the whole Schur ring is trivial since is already known to be in the basis
and
generates the whole group . Let
us assume then that
is in , and mark this as
Assumption 1.
From the second part of our sufficient condition we also know that
and are both relatively prime to . Now is in and the difference between the
two powers is which we know is
relatively prime to . Lemma 1
therefore gives us that must also be in since is also relatively prime to . Both the elements and have within them, however, and under
Assumption 1 these should be basis elements. This is
only possible if and that implies that mod , which
contradicts the third part of our sufficient condition.
Hence it must be the case that our Assumption 1 is
false and so must be trivial.
We can now focus on proving Theorem 5:
Proof of Theorem 5. We will prove Theorem 5 by showing that cannot be an element of
and then use Lemma 2 to
meet the sufficient conditions of Theorem 2 and so bring about
the result.
We substitute for at this point for simplicity’s
sake. We will begin by assuming that is in and then show how this
must imply a contradiction. We label this as (Assumption
2) for further reference.
So let us begin by considering the following statement, which we
label as (i) for further reference:
Assuming that (Assumption 2) is true then by
Observation 1 it must be possible to express (i) as
the sum of elements of . However, we shall
show that doing so implies a contradiction which means that
(Assumption 2) must be false.
We begin by noting that the group elements on the right hand side of
(i) must either be isolated in the basis of the Schur
ring or be grouped with other elements also on the right hand side of
(i).
For the sake of brevity let us denote the sum of the elements on the
right hand side as . We note now
that is equal to
We notice that the total coefficient of on the right hand side is 4
(remember it also occurs in ),
and so, by the Schur Wielandt principle the only elements which can be grouped with in the Schur
ring’s basis must also have a coefficient of 4 in the expansion of . However, with the exception of
, achieving this requires
that or
is equal to the power of
some element in . This implies
= for or and
or . Regardless of the values of and we get implies since we
are working in modulo where is definitely larger than 6. Therefore
can only possibly be
grouped with or be an
isolated element in the basis.
Let us first consider the possibility that is an isolated element. If so,
then must also be an
isolated element in the basis by simply cubing . Since our assumption is that
is in we can consider the
product of and
, which must be in .
Note how the term
appears on the right hand side above. Since we are assuming that is in , and must appear too. There are only two
ways this is possible:
and , or,
and .
All the equations above, however, imply that which is a contradiction. And so
cannot be an isolated
element in the basis without contradicting (Assumption
2). Therefore, the only way to avoid contradicting
(Assumption 2) is for to be an element in the
basis.
This gives us that is in the Schur ring. This
expression expands to . Notably the terms appear here and due to (Assumption 2)
this means that must
appear also. There are three ways this could happen:
gives us , or,
gives us , or,
gives us .
But all these ways imply
which is again a contradiction. This rules out the possibility that
is an element in
the basis.
Therefore, (Assumption 2) must be false and is not in for if it were, then it
would be a basis element which cannot be expressed as a linear sum of
basis elements when squared, which contradicts the definition of a Schur
ring.
Since the relationship
mod excludes the possibility that
the sum of any two of is
equal to twice the third, Lemma 2.2 gives us that is trivial and so meaning that is
a GRR of by Theorem 2.
Corollary 1 follows immediately by observing that
, and , being less than , immediately implies that both they and
their differences are relatively prime to . We also note the following theorem,
although we invite the reader to read its proof and that of its
corollary in a companion paper to this one which is available on arXiv
[21] as that proof is
very similar to the proof given above.
Theorem 6. Let be an odd integer greater than 5 and
let , , and be integers less than such that the difference of any two of
them is relatively prime to . If
mod , then is
a GRR of .
Just as with the prior theorem, Theorem 2.2 has a tidy corollary for
prime numbers:
Corollary 2. Let be an odd integer with its smallest
prime factor being greater than 5
and let , , and be distinct integers less than . If mod , then is
a GRR of .
In the next section we shall give a few examples in which the above
results are applied.
3. Examples of GRR
Constructions
We will be focusing on applying Corollary 1 to when itself is prime, giving us GRRs of
, as this will provide clear and
concise examples.
3.1 A Simple Application
First let us start with .
To satisfy the equation we
will take , and . Therefore is a GRR
of . We present the Cayley
colour graph for this connecting set in Figure 3 so that the
reader can see which element of the connecting set gave rise to which
edge: is red, is blue and is green. These edge-colourings hold
true irrespective of which vertex is the identity element of since every automorphism of a GRR
only maps edges of the same colour to each other [22].
Figure 3 is a GRR of . Red Edges Correspond to the
Generating Element , Blue Edges
to the Element and Green Edges
Correspond to
3.2 Reusing Connecting Sets
In the previous example we used the values for the parameters respectively to construct a
GRR for . However, with a
very simple theorem we can show that these values for can be used to construct
GRRs for an infinite number of dihedral groups where is prime.
To do this, we prove the following theorem. Note that all arithmetic
in the proof is only modular arithmetic if it is explicitly said to be
so, and all order relations are to be understood as an ordering on the
positive integers:
Theorem 7. Let be prime. Suppose that, for a given there exist
integers such that Then, if then also holds.
Proof. Consider integers such that such that is as small an integer as possible.
Clearly this statement is equivalent to mod . If then it follows that mod also holds.
Now consider mod . We can
take and as and above (respectively) so that
. If then it follows that and so mod must
hold.
This theorem has a useful corollary:
Corollary 3. Let be prime. Let be a dihedral group such that
. Let be integers which satisfy and
therefore let us construct a connecting set for a GRR of where . If then those same integers can be used to construct a
connecting set which admits a
GRR for where and .
Figure 4 is a GRR of . The Colour of the Edges
Correspond to the Generating Elements as in Figure 3.
With this, any solutions for which we find when trying to form a
GRR for some dihedral group
with prime can be re-used to
construct connecting sets for an infinite number of other dihedral
groups, specifically those dihedral groups where and prime.
Figure 4 is a GRR of which we construct using the same
values we found when constructing a GRR for in the previous example.
3.3 Some Further Solutions
Below is a table of connecting sets for for a few prime values of , found using the equation mod (see Corollary 1). While
constructing these connecting sets, the condition was respected and so
we know from Corollary 3 that all the sets in the table below
are in fact connecting sets for GRRs of not just for the prime number given
in its row but for all prime numbers larger than it too.
For brevity we present only the prime numbers up to 100.
Table 1 Results obtained for Subcase IVb in Table 4
Connecting Set()
7
2
3
0
11
3
4
1
13
4
6
0
17
5
7
1
19
6
9
0
23
7
10
1
29
9
13
1
31
10
15
0
37
12
18
0
41
13
19
1
43
14
21
0
47
15
22
1
53
17
25
1
59
19
28
1
61
20
30
0
67
22
33
0
71
23
34
1
73
24
36
0
79
26
39
0
83
27
40
1
89
29
43
1
97
32
48
0
4. Conclusion
By making use of a few theorems and lemmas about Schur rings we have
shown easy ways to construct trivalent GRRs for dihedral groups where is an odd number. It is the opinion of
the authors that these results are evidence that even a basic study of
Schur rings can be fruitful not only in the search for GRRs but also in
other areas of algebraic graph theory.
We are now in a position where we can produce two GRRs for each
member of an infinite family of dihedral groups within moments. For
example, and
are connecting
sets for GRRs of all where
is prime and larger than 11, by
using Corollaries 1, 2 and 3.
This can be the groundwork for several further lines of inquiry. For
example, are the methods we have outlined sufficient to find all
possible trivalent GRRs for the relevant dihedral groups? If no, can we
perhaps find a similar approach to account for the remaining ones? If
yes, can these methods be used as groundwork for enumeration
theorems?
Moreover, the methods we have described here can be expanded to find
GRRs for dihedral groups with a valency greater than 3 and we can also
slightly relax the conditions on the parameter . This is all to be discussed another
time, however.
These lines of inquiry we have outlined may yet yield further useful
results.
Conflict of
Interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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