Strongly walk-regular graphs

We study a generalization of strongly regular graphs. We call a graph strongly walk-regular if there is an $\ell >1$ such that the number of walks of length $\ell$ from a vertex to another vertex depends only on whether the two vertices are the same, adjacent, or not adjacent. We will show that a strongly walk-regular graph must be an empty graph, a complete graph, a strongly regular graph, a disjoint union of complete bipartite graphs of the same size and isolated vertices, or a regular graph with four eigenvalues. Graphs from the first three families in this list are indeed strongly $\ell$-walk-regular for all $\ell$, whereas the graphs from the fourth family are $\ell$-walk-regular for every odd $\ell$. The case of regular graphs with four eigenvalues is the most interesting (and complicated) one. Such graphs cannot be strongly $\ell$-walk-regular for even $\ell$. We will characterize the case that regular four-eigenvalue graphs are strongly $\ell$-walk-regular for every odd $\ell$, in terms of the eigenvalues. There are several examples of infinite families of such graphs. We will show that every other regular four-eigenvalue graph can be strongly $\ell$-walk-regular for at most one $\ell$. There are several examples of infinite families of such graphs that are strongly 3-walk-regular. It however remains open whether there are any graphs that are strongly $\ell$-walk-regular for only one particular $\ell$ different from 3

Dynamic Chromatic Number of Regular Graphs

A dynamic coloring of a graph $G$ is a proper coloring such that for every vertex $v\in V(G)$ of degree at least 2, the neighbors of $v$ receive at least 2 colors. It was conjectured [B. Montgomery. {\em Dynamic coloring of graphs}. PhD thesis, West Virginia University, 2001.] that if $G$ is a $k$-regular graph, then $\chi_2(G)-\chi(G)\leq 2$. In this paper, we prove that if $G$ is a $k$-regular graph with $\chi(G)\geq 4$, then $\chi_2(G)\leq \chi(G)+\alpha(G^2)$. It confirms the conjecture for all regular graph $G$ with diameter at most 2 and $\chi(G)\geq 4$. In fact, it shows that $\chi_2(G)-\chi(G)\leq 1$ provided that $G$ has diameter at most 2 and $\chi(G)\geq 4$. Moreover, we show that for any $k$-regular graph $G$, $\chi_2(G)-\chi(G)\leq 6\ln k+2$. Also, we show that for any $n$ there exists a regular graph $G$ whose chromatic number is $n$ and $\chi_2(G)-\chi(G)\geq 1$. This result gives a negative answer to a conjecture of [A. Ahadi, S. Akbari, A. Dehghan, and M. Ghanbari. \newblock On the difference between chromatic number and dynamic chromatic number of graphs. \newblock {\em Discrete Math.}, In press].Comment: 8 page