Dirichlet Character Difference Graphs.docVIP

ActaMath.Univ.Comenianae Vol.LXXXII, 1(2013),pp.21–28 21 DIRICHLET CHARACTER DIFFERENCE GRAPHS M. BUDDEN, N. CALKINS, W. N. HACK, J. LAMBERT and K. THOMPSON Abstract. Wede?neDirichletcharacterdi?erencegraphsanddescribetheirbasic properties,includingtheenumerationoftriangles. Inthecasewherethemodulusis anodd prime,weexploitthespectral properties ofsuchgraphsinordertoprovide meaningfulupper bounds fortheirdiameter. 1. Introduction Upon one’s ?rst encounter with abstract algebra, a theorem which resonates throughout the theory is Cayley’s theorem, which states that every ?nite group is isomorphic to a subgroup of some symmetric group. The signi?cance of such aresultcomesfromgivingall?nitegroupsacommongroundbyallowingoneto focus on groups of permutations. It comes as no surprise that algebraic graph theorists chose the name Cayley graphs to describe graphs which depict groups. Moreformally,ifGisagroupandS isasubsetofGclosedundertakinginverses and not containing the identity, then the Cayley graph, Cay(G,S), is de?ned to bethegraphwithvertexsetGandanedgeoccurringbetweentheverticesg and h if hg encountered include the class of circulant graphs. A circulant graph, denoted by ?1 ∈ S [9]. Some of the ?rst examples of Cayley graphs that are usually Circ(m,S),usesZ/mZasthegroupforaCayleygraphandthegeneratingsetS ischosenamongsttheintegersintheset{1,2,···bmc}[2]. 2 Alongside the creation of circulant graphs, graph theorists have conceived of generating sets which attract interest and intrigue across multiple disciplines of mathematics. One such generating set is the set of quadratic residues in Z/pZ where p is an odd prime with p ≡ 1 (mod4). Such graphs involving quadratic residueswere?rstcreatedunderamoregeneralsettingin1962bySachs[17 ]and laterdevelopedindependentlyin1963byErd?osandR′enyi[8]. Althoughthesecre- ationscamefromdi?erentschoolsofthought,thenamePaleygraphs(namedafter themathematicianRaymondPaleyforhisworkonHadamardmatricesinvolving quadratic