Most switching classes with primitive automorphism groups contain graphs with trivial groups

TL;DR

This paper proves that most switching classes with primitive automorphism groups include graphs with trivial automorphism groups, revealing a surprising diversity within such classes.

Contribution

It establishes that, except for finitely many cases, switching classes with primitive automorphism groups contain graphs with trivial automorphism groups, and it classifies the exceptions.

Findings

Most switching classes with primitive automorphism groups contain graphs with trivial automorphism groups.

There are exactly six exceptional switching classes up to complementation.

The main theorem applies to all but finitely many switching classes with primitive automorphism groups.

Abstract

The operation of switching a graph $\Gamma$ with respect to a subset $X$ of the vertex set interchanges edges and non-edges between $X$ and its complement, leaving the rest of the graph unchanged. This is an equivalence relation on the set of graphs on a given vertex set, so we can talk about the automorphism group of a switching class of graphs. It might be thought that switching classes with many automorphisms would have the property that all their graphs also have many automorphisms. However the main theorem of this paper shows a different picture: with finitely many exceptions, if a non-trivial switching class $\mathcal{S}$ has primitive automorphism group, then it contains a graph whose automorphism group is trivial. We also find all the exceptional switching classes; up to complementation, there are just six.