Bounds on the diameter of Cayley graphs of the symmetric group

In this paper we are concerned with the conjecture that, for any set of generators S of the symmetric group of degree n, the word length in terms of S of every permutation is bounded above by a polynomial of n. We prove this conjecture for sets of generators containing a permutation fixing at least 37% of the points.Comment: 17 pages, 6 table

Large butterfly Cayley graphs and digraphs

We present families of large undirected and directed Cayley graphs whose construction is related to butterfly networks. One approach yields, for every large $k$ and for values of $d$ taken from a large interval, the largest known Cayley graphs and digraphs of diameter $k$ and degree $d$. Another method yields, for sufficiently large $k$ and infinitely many values of $d$, Cayley graphs and digraphs of diameter $k$ and degree $d$ whose order is exponentially larger in $k$ than any previously constructed. In the directed case, these are within a linear factor in $k$ of the Moore bound.Comment: 7 page

Distance-regular Cayley graphs with small valency

We consider the problem of which distance-regular graphs with small valency are Cayley graphs. We determine the distance-regular Cayley graphs with valency at most $4$, the Cayley graphs among the distance-regular graphs with known putative intersection arrays for valency $5$, and the Cayley graphs among all distance-regular graphs with girth $3$ and valency $6$ or $7$. We obtain that the incidence graphs of Desarguesian affine planes minus a parallel class of lines are Cayley graphs. We show that the incidence graphs of the known generalized hexagons are not Cayley graphs, and neither are some other distance-regular graphs that come from small generalized quadrangles or hexagons. Among some ``exceptional'' distance-regular graphs with small valency, we find that the Armanios-Wells graph and the Klein graph are Cayley graphs.Comment: 19 pages, 4 table

Metric intersection problems in Cayley graphs and the Stirling recursion

In the symmetric group Sym(n) with n at least 5 let H be a conjugacy class of elements of order 2 and let \Gamma be the Cayley graph whose vertex set is the group G generated by H (so G is Sym(n) or Alt(n)) and whose edge set is determined by H. We are interested in the metric structure of this graph. In particular, for g\in G let B_{r}(g) be the metric ball in \Gamma of radius r and centre g. We show that the intersection numbers \Phi(\Gamma; r, g):=|\,B_{r}(e)\,\cap\,B_{r}(g)\,| are generalized Stirling functions in n and r. The results are motivated by the study of error graphs and related reconstruction problems.Comment: 18 page