Constructive and analytic enumeration of circulant graphs with $p^3$ vertices; $p=3,5$

TL;DR

This paper presents two detailed methods for the exact enumeration of circulant graphs of order 27 and 125, providing new numerical data and conjectures that advance understanding of their structure and counting.

Contribution

It introduces a combined structural and analytical approach for enumerating circulant graphs of prime cube orders, including new computational results and conjectured identities.

Findings

Number of directed circulant graphs of order 27 is 3,728,891.

Identified 457 self-complementary circulant graphs of order 27.

Established conjectured identities between enumeration parameters for prime cube orders.

Abstract

Two methods, structural (constructive) and multiplier (analytical), of exact enumeration of undirected and directed circulant graphs of orders 27 and 125 are elaborated and represented in detail here together with intermediate and final numerical data. The first method is based on the known useful classification of circulant graphs in terms of $S$-rings and results in exhaustive listing (with the use of COCO and GAP) of all corresponding $S$-rings of the indicated orders. The latter method is conducted in the framework of a general approach developed earlier for counting circulant graphs of prime-power orders. It is a Redfield--P\'olya type of enumeration based on an isomorphism criterion for circulant graphs of such orders. In particular, five intermediate enumeration subproblems arise, which are refined further into eleven subproblems of this type (5 and 11 are, not accidentally, the 3d Catalan and 3d little Schr\"oder numbers, resp.). All of them are resolved for the four cases under consideration (again with the use of GAP). We give a brief survey of some background theory of the results which form the basis of our computational approach. Except for the case of undirected circulant graphs of orders 27, the numerical results obtained here are new. In particular the number (up to isomorphism) of directed circulant graphs of orders 27, regardless of valency, is shown to be equal to 3,728,891 while 457 of these are self-complementary. Some curious and rather unexpected identities are established between intermediate valency-specified enumerators (both for undirected and directed circulant graphs) and their validity is conjectured for arbitrary cubed odd prime $p^3$. We believe that this research can serve as the crucial step towards explicit uniform enumeration formulae for circulant graphs of orders $p^3$ for arbitrary prime $p>2$.