English

Graphs With the Same Edge Count in Each Neighborhood

Combinatorics 2025-07-22 v1 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

In a recent paper, Caro, Lauri, Mifsud, Yuster, and Zarb ask which parameters rr and cc admit the existence of an rr-regular graph such that the neighborhood of each vertex induces exactly cc edges. They show that every rr with cc satisfying 0c(r2)5r3/20\leq c\leq {r\choose 2}-5r^{3/2} is achievable, but no rr with cc satisfying (r2)r3c(r2)1{r\choose 2}-\lfloor\frac{r}{3}\rfloor\leq c\leq {r\choose 2}-1 is. We strengthen the bound in their nonexistence result from (r2)r3{r\choose 2}-\lfloor\frac{r}{3}\rfloor to (r2)r22{r\choose 2}-\lfloor\frac{r-2}{2}\rfloor. Additionally, when the graph is the Cayley graph of an abelian group, we obtain a much more fine-grained characterization of the achievable values of cc between (r2)5r3/2\binom{r}{2} - 5r^{3/2} and (r2)r22\binom{r}{2} - \lfloor\frac{r-2}{2}\rfloor, which we conjecture to be the correct answer for general graphs as well. That result relies on a lemma about approximate subgroups in the "99% regime," quantifying the extent to which nearly-additively-closed subsets of an abelian group must be close to actual subgroups. Finally, we consider a generalization to graphs with multiple types of edges and partially resolve several open questions of Caro et al. about flip\textit{flip} colorings of graphs.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2507.14473,
  title  = {Graphs With the Same Edge Count in Each Neighborhood},
  author = {Nathan S. Sheffield and Zoe Xi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.14473},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

21 pages

R2 v1 2026-07-01T04:08:58.649Z