On regular graphs equienergetic with their complements

TL;DR

This paper characterizes when regular graphs are equienergetic with their complements, providing classifications for various graph families including cubic, bipartite, strongly regular, and certain Cayley graphs, revealing new structural insights.

Contribution

It offers necessary and sufficient conditions for regular graphs to be equienergetic with their complements, including classifications for specific graph families and new characterizations within Cameron's hierarchy.

Findings

Classified connected cubic graphs with loops and without loops that are equienergetic with their complements.

Identified that bipartite regular graphs equienergetic with their complements are crown graphs or C4.

Characterized strongly regular graphs that are equienergetic with their complements, including conference and pseudo Latin square graphs.

Abstract

We give necessary and sufficient conditions on the parameters of a regular graph $\Gamma$ (with or without loops) such that $E(\Gamma)=E(\overline \Gamma)$. We study complementary equienergetic cubic graphs obtaining classifications up to isomorphisms for connected cubic graphs with single loops (5 non-isospectral pairs) and connected integral cubic graphs without loops ($\Gamma = K_3 \square K_2$ or $Q_3$). Then we show that, up to complements, the only bipartite regular graphs equienergetic and non-isospectral with their complements are the crown graphs $Cr(n)$ or $C_4$. Next, for the family of strongly regular graphs $\Gamma$ we characterize all possible parameters $srg(n,k,e,d)$ such that $E(\Gamma) = E(\overline \Gamma)$. Furthermore, using this, we prove that a strongly regular graph is equienergetic to its complement if and only if it is either a conference graph or else it is a pseudo Latin square graph (i.e. has $OA$ parameters). We also characterize all complementary equienergetic pairs of graphs of type $\mathcal{C}(2)$, $\mathcal{C}(3)$ and $\mathcal{C}(5)$ in Cameron's hierarchy (the cases $\mathcal{C}(1)$ and $\mathcal{C}(4)$ are still open). Finally, we consider unitary Cayley graphs over rings $G_R=X(R,R^*)$. We show that if $R$ is a finite Artinian ring with an even number of local factors, then $G_R$ is complementary equienergetic if and only if $R=\mathbb{F}_q \times \mathbb{F}_{q'}$ is the product of 2 finite fields.