Another construction of edge-regular graphs with regular cliques

We exhibit a new construction of edge-regular graphs with regular cliques that are not strongly regular. The infinite family of graphs resulting from this construction includes an edge-regular graph with parameters $(24,8,2)$. We also show that edge-regular graphs with $1$-regular cliques that are not strongly regular must have at least $24$ vertices.Comment: 7 page

The Second Subconstituent of some Strongly Regular Graphs

This is a report on a failed attempt to construct new graphs that are strongly regular with no triangles. The approach is based on the assumption that the second subconstituent has an equitable partition with four parts. For infinitely many odd prime powers we construct a graph that is a plausible candidate for the second subconstituent. Unfortuantely we also show that the corresponding graph is strongly regular only when the prime power is 3, in which case the graph is already known.Comment: 9 page

On a conjecture of Brouwer involving the connectivity of strongly regular graphs

In this paper, we study a conjecture of Andries E. Brouwer from 1996 regarding the minimum number of vertices of a strongly regular graph whose removal disconnects the graph into non-singleton components. We show that strongly regular graphs constructed from copolar spaces and from the more general spaces called $\Delta$-spaces are counterexamples to Brouwer's Conjecture. Using J.I. Hall's characterization of finite reduced copolar spaces, we find that the triangular graphs $T(m)$, the symplectic graphs $Sp(2r,q)$ over the field $\mathbb{F}_q$ (for any $q$ prime power), and the strongly regular graphs constructed from the hyperbolic quadrics $O^{+}(2r,2)$ and from the elliptic quadrics $O^{-}(2r,2)$ over the field $\mathbb{F}_2$, respectively, are counterexamples to Brouwer's Conjecture. For each of these graphs, we determine precisely the minimum number of vertices whose removal disconnects the graph into non-singleton components. While we are not aware of an analogue of Hall's characterization theorem for $\Delta$-spaces, we show that complements of the point graphs of certain finite generalized quadrangles are point graphs of $\Delta$-spaces and thus, yield other counterexamples to Brouwer's Conjecture. We prove that Brouwer's Conjecture is true for many families of strongly regular graphs including the conference graphs, the generalized quadrangles $GQ(q,q)$ graphs, the lattice graphs, the Latin square graphs, the strongly regular graphs with smallest eigenvalue -2 (except the triangular graphs) and the primitive strongly regular graphs with at most 30 vertices except for few cases. We leave as an open problem determining the best general lower bound for the minimum size of a disconnecting set of vertices of a strongly regular graph, whose removal disconnects the graph into non-singleton components.Comment: 25 pages, 1 table; accepted to JCTA; revised version contains a new section on copolar and Delta space