TOPICS
Search

Orbital


An orbital of a permutation group Gamma acting on a finite set Omega is a group orbit of the componentwise group action of Gamma on the cartesian product Omega×Omega. Thus the orbital containing (alpha,beta) is

 Delta=(alpha,beta)^Gamma={(alpha^g,beta^g):g in Gamma}.

The paired orbital of Delta is Delta^T={(y,x):(x,y) in Delta}. An orbital is self-paired if it equals its paired orbital, so Delta=Delta^T. The diagonal orbital {(omega,omega):omega in Omega} is also called the trivial orbital.

An orbital is the arc set of an orbital digraph. A self-paired orbital, or an orbital together with its paired orbital, gives the edge set of an undirected orbital graph.


See also

Diagonal Orbital, Finite Set, Group Orbit, Orbital Digraph, Orbital Graph, Paired Orbital, Permutation Group, Self-Paired Orbital

Explore with Wolfram|Alpha

References

Lauri, J. and Scapellato, R. "Orbital Graphs and Strongly Regular Graphs." Ch. 4 in Topics in Graph Automorphisms and Reconstruction, 2nd ed. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, pp. 64-78, 2016.

Cite this as:

Weisstein, Eric W. "Orbital." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Resource. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Orbital.html

Subject classifications