Time and Place: 22 September 2006, 10:00 am, KED B015, University of Ottawa

First speaker: Gabriel Verret
, University of Ottawa

Title: Shifts in Cayley Graphs

Abstract:

An automorphism of a finite undirected simple graph is called a shift if it maps every vertex to an adjacent one. A graph without a shift is called shiftless. We consider which Cayley graphs have shifts, and classify the finite groups by the type of shiftless Cayley graphs they admit. In particular, we classify the groups on which all non-edgeless Cayley graphs admit a shift.

Second speaker: Mateja Šajna, University of Ottawa

Title:  On Regular and Vertex-Transitive Self-Complementary Hypergraphs

Abstract:  

A k-uniform hypergraph (V,E) is a collection E of k-subsets (called edges) of the vertex set V. The complement of a k-uniform hypergraph (V,E) is the k-uniform hypergraph (V,E'), where E' is the complement of E in the set of all k-subsets of V. A k-uniform hypergraph X=(V,E) is called self-complementary if it is isomorphic to its complement,  t-subset-regular if every t-subset of V lies in the same number of elements of E, and vertex-transitive if the automorphism group of X acts transitively on the vertex set V.

In the first part of this talk, we discuss some necessary conditions on the number of vertices of a t-subset-regular self-complementary k-uniform hypergraph. These necessary conditions are known to be sufficient for graphs, that is, in the case k=2. We show that they are also sufficient in the case t=1 and k=3; that is, we show that there exists a 1-subset-regular self-complementary 3-uniform hypergraph of order n if and only if n is congruent to 1 or 2 modulo 4.

In the second part of the talk we present some analogous results on the existence of vertex-transitive self-complementary uniform hypergraphs of certain orders and ranks.