Minimal Regular Graphs of Girths Eight and Twelve

Abstract

In (3) Tutte showed that the order of a regular graph of degree d and even girth g > 4 is greater than or equal toHere the girth of a graph is the length of the shortest circuit. It was shown in (2) that this lower bound cannot be attained for regular graphs of degree > 2 for g ≠ 6, 8, or 12. When this lower bound is attained, the graph is called minimal. In a group-theoretic setting a similar situation arose and it was noticed by Gleason that minimal regular graphs of girth 12 could be constructed from certain groups. Here we construct these graphs making only incidental use of group theory. Also we give what is believed to be an easier construction of minimal regular graphs of girth 8 than is given in (2). These results are contained in the following two theorems.