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Gray graph

Marion Cameron Gray found in 1932 a graph that was first published in 1968 by Bouwer: a cubic graph on 54 vertices with girth 8 that is semisymmetric, i.e., edge-transitive and regular, but not vertex-transitive. Malnič et al. showed in 2002 that this is the smallest cubic semisymmetric graph.

Construction

In the generalized quadrangle GQ(2,4), remove the lines from 3 disjoint GQ(2,1)'s. What is left is a geometry with 27 points and 27 lines, three points on each line and three lines on each point. The point-line incidence graph is the Gray graph.

Equivalently, take the point-line incidence graph of the Hamming cube H(3,3) (where now the rôles of points and lines are reversed).

Group

The group is 33:(S4×2) of order 1296. It is transitive on the points and on the lines and on the edges (incident point-line pairs), but is not vertex transitive. The point (line in H(3,3)) stabilizer is D8×S3. The line (point in H(3,3)) stabilizer is S4×2. (Both of order 48.)

Spectrum

The Gray graph has spectrum ±31, (±√6)6, (±√3)12, 016, and is the unique graph with this spectrum.

Reference

I. Z. Bouwer, An edge but not vertex transitive cubic graph, Bull. Can. Math. Soc. 11 (1968) 533-535.

A. Malnič, D. Marušič, P. Potočnik & C. Wang, An infinite family of cubic edge- but not vertex-transitive graphs, Discr. Math. 280 (2002) 133-148.