Regular graph

Short description: Graph where each vertex has the same number of neighbors

Graph families defined by their automorphisms
distance-transitive	→	distance-regular	←	strongly regular
↓
symmetric (arc-transitive)	←	t-transitive, t ≥ 2		skew-symmetric
↓
(if connected) vertex- and edge-transitive	→	edge-transitive and regular	→	edge-transitive
↓		↓		↓
vertex-transitive	→	regular	→	(if bipartite) biregular
↑
Cayley graph	←	zero-symmetric		asymmetric

In graph theory, a regular graph is a graph where each vertex has the same number of neighbors; i.e. every vertex has the same degree or valency. A regular directed graph must also satisfy the stronger condition that the indegree and outdegree of each internal vertex are equal to each other. A regular graph with vertices of degree k is called a k‑regular graph or regular graph of degree k. Also, from the handshaking lemma, a regular graph contains an even number of vertices with odd degree.

Special cases

Regular graphs of degree at most 2 are easy to classify: a 0-regular graph consists of disconnected vertices, a 1-regular graph consists of disconnected edges, and a 2-regular graph consists of a disjoint union of cycles and infinite chains.

A 3-regular graph is known as a cubic graph.

A strongly regular graph is a regular graph where every adjacent pair of vertices has the same number l of neighbors in common, and every non-adjacent pair of vertices has the same number n of neighbors in common. The smallest graphs that are regular but not strongly regular are the cycle graph and the circulant graph on 6 vertices.

The complete graph K_m is strongly regular for any m.

• 
  0-regular graph
• 
  1-regular graph
• 
  2-regular graph
• 
  3-regular graph

Existence

The necessary and sufficient conditions for a $k$ regular graph of order $n$ to exist are that $n\ge k+1$ and that $nk$ is even.

Proof: A complete graph has every pair of distinct vertices connected to each other by a unique edge. So edges are maximum in complete graph and number of edges are $(\genfrac{}{}{0ex}{}{n}{2})=\frac{n(n-1)}{2}$ and degree here is $n-1$. So $k=n-1,n=k+1$. This is the minimum $n$ for a particular $k$. Also note that if any regular graph has order $n$ then number of edges are $\frac{nk}{2}$ so $nk$ has to be even. In such case it is easy to construct regular graphs by considering appropriate parameters for circulant graphs.

Properties

A theorem by Nash-Williams says that every k‑regular graph on 2k + 1 vertices has a Hamiltonian cycle.

Let A be the adjacency matrix of a graph. Then the graph is regular if and only if $\text{j}=(1,\dots ,1)$ is an eigenvector of A. Its eigenvalue will be the constant degree of the graph. Eigenvectors corresponding to other eigenvalues are orthogonal to $\text{j}$, so for such eigenvectors $v=(v_1,\dots ,v_n)$, we have $\sum _{i=1}^n{v}_i=0$.

A regular graph of degree k is connected if and only if the eigenvalue k has multiplicity one. The "only if" direction is a consequence of the Perron–Frobenius theorem.

There is also a criterion for regular and connected graphs : a graph is connected and regular if and only if the matrix of ones J, with $J_{ij}=1$, is in the adjacency algebra of the graph (meaning it is a linear combination of powers of A).

Let G be a k-regular graph with diameter D and eigenvalues of adjacency matrix $k={\lambda }_0>{\lambda }_1\ge \cdots \ge {\lambda }_{n-1}$. If G is not bipartite, then

$D\le \frac{\log (n-1)}{\log ({\lambda }_0/{\lambda }_1)}+1.$

Generation

Fast algorithms exist to generate, up to isomorphism, all regular graphs with a given degree and number of vertices.

See also

• Random regular graph
• Strongly regular graph
• Moore graph
• Cage graph
• Highly irregular graph

External links

• Weisstein, Eric W.. "Regular Graph". http://mathworld.wolfram.com/RegularGraph.html. 
• Weisstein, Eric W.. "Strongly Regular Graph". http://mathworld.wolfram.com/StronglyRegularGraph.html. 
• GenReg software and data by Markus Meringer.
• Nash-Williams, Crispin (1969), Valency Sequences which force graphs to have Hamiltonian Circuits, University of Waterloo Research Report, Waterloo, Ontario: University of Waterloo