A combinatorial approach to counting primitive periodic and primitive pseudo orbits on circulant graphs

For families of 4-regular directed circulant graphs with $n$ vertices, we count the number of primitive periodic orbits of length up to at least $n$. The relevant counting techniques are then extended to count the number of primitive pseudo orbits (sets of distinct primitive periodic orbits) of length up to at least $n$ that lack self-intersections, or that self-intersect only at individual vertices repeated exactly twice (2-encounters of length zero), for two particular families of 4-regular directed circulant graphs. We then regard these two families of graphs as families of quantum graphs and use the counting results to compute the variance of the coefficients of the quantum graph's characteristic polynomial.