A NOTE ON THE TUTTE POLYNOMIAL AND THE AUTOMORPHISM GROUP OF A GRAPH

Abstract

A graph G is said to be p-periodic if the automorphism group Aut(G) contains an element of order p which preserves no edges. In this short note, we investigate the behavior of graph polynomials (Negami and Tutte) with respect to graph periodicity. In particular, we prove that if p is a prime, then the coefficients of the Tutte polynomial of such a graph satisfy a certain necessary condition.