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Article
The Minimal Zn-Symmetric Graphs that are Not Zn-Spherical
European Journal of Combinatorics
  • Lowell Abrams
  • Dan Slilaty, Wright State University - Main Campus
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-1-2015
Abstract

Given a graph G equipped with faithful and fixed-point-free Γ-action (Γ a finite group) we define an orbit minor H of G to be a minor of G for which the deletion and contraction sets are closed under the Γ-action. The orbit minor H inherits a Γ-symmetry from G, and when the contraction set is acyclic the action inherited by H remains faithful and fixed-point free. When G embeds in the sphere and the Γ-action on G extends to a Γ-action on the entire sphere, we say that G is Γ-spherical. In this paper we determine for every odd value of n ≥ 3 the orbit-minor-minimal graphs G with a faithful and free Zn-action that are not Zn-spherical. There are 11 infinite families of such graphs, each of the 11 having exactly one member for each n. For n = 3, another such graph is K3,3. The remaining graphs are, essentially, the Cayley graphs for Zn aside from the cycle of length n. The result for n = 1 is exactly Wagner’s result from 1937 that the minor-minimal graphs that are not embeddable in the sphere are K5 and K3,3.

DOI
10.1016/j.ejc.2014.12.001
Citation Information
Lowell Abrams and Dan Slilaty. "The Minimal Zn-Symmetric Graphs that are Not Zn-Spherical" European Journal of Combinatorics Vol. 46 (2015) p. 95 - 114 ISSN: 0195-6698
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/dan_slilaty/23/