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ALGEBRAIC
COMBINATORICS

  Editors-in-chief: C. A. Athanasiadis, T. Lam, A. Munemasa, H. Van Maldeghem
ISSN 0925-9899 (print) • ISSN 1572-9192 (electronic)
 

Leaves in Representation Diagrams of Bipartite Distance-Regular Graphs

Michael S. Lang

DOI: 10.1023/B:JACO.0000011939.15842.26

Abstract

Let Gamma denote a bipartite distance-regular graph with diameter D ge 3 and valency k ge 3. Let theta 0 > theta 1 ;;; > theta D denote the eigenvalues of Gamma and let q h ij (0 le h, i, j le D) denote the Krein parameters of Gamma. Pick an integer h (1 le h le D - 1). The representation diagram Delta = Delta h is an undirected graph with vertices 0,1,..., D. For 0 le i, j le D, vertices i, j are adjacent in Delta whenever i ne j and q h ij ne 0. It turns out that in Delta, the vertex 0 is adjacent to h and no other vertices. Similarly, the vertex D is adjacent to D - h and no other vertices. We call 0, D the trivial vertices of Delta. Let l denote a vertex of Delta. It turns out that l is adjacent to at least one vertex of Delta. We say l is a leaf whenever l is adjacent to exactly one vertex of Delta. We show Delta has a nontrivial leaf if and only if Delta is the disjoint union of two paths.

Pages: 245–254

Keywords: primitive idempotent; eigenvalue; association scheme; Q-polynomial; antipodal

Full Text: PDF

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