A graph is said to be regular of degree if all local degrees are the
same number
.
A 0-regular graph is an empty graph, a 1-regular graph
consists of disconnected edges, and a two-regular
graph consists of one or more (disconnected) cycles. The first interesting case
is therefore 3-regular graphs, which are called cubic
graphs (Harary 1994, pp. 14-15). Most commonly, "cubic graphs"
is used to mean "connected cubic graphs." Note that
-arc-transitive graphs
are sometimes also called "
-regular" (Harary 1994, p. 174).
A graph on an odd number of vertices such that degree of every vertex is the same odd number
except for a single vertex whose degree is
may be called a quasi-regular
graph (Bozóki et al. 2020).
A semirandom -regular
graph can be generated using RegularGraph[k,
n] in the Wolfram Language
package Combinatorica` .
The following table lists the names of low-order -regular graphs.
name for | |
3 | cubic graph |
4 | quartic graph |
5 | quintic graph |
6 | sextic graph |
7 | septic graph |
8 | octic graph |
Some regular graphs of degree higher than 5 are summarized in the following table.
The numbers of nonisomorphic connected regular graphs of order ,
2, ... are 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 5, 4, 17, 22, 167, ... (OEIS A005177;
Steinbach 1990).
For an -regular
graph on
nodes,
where
is the edge count. Let
be the number of connected
-regular graphs with
points. Then
,
, and
when both
and
are odd. Zhang and Yang (1989)
give
for
,
and Meringer provides a similar tabulation including complete enumerations for low
orders.
The following table gives the numbers of connected
-regular graphs for small numbers of nodes
(Meringer 1999, Meringer).
Sloane | A002851 | A006820 | A006821 | A006822 | A014377 | A014378 | A014381 | A014382 | A014384 | |
class | cubic | quartic | quintic | sextic | septic | octic | ||||
4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
5 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
6 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
7 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
8 | 5 | 6 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
9 | 0 | 16 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
10 | 19 | 59 | 60 | 21 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
11 | 0 | 265 | 0 | 266 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
12 | 85 | 1544 | 7848 | 7849 | 1547 | 94 | 9 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
13 | 0 | 10778 | 0 | 367860 | 0 | 10786 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 1 |
14 | 509 | 88168 | 3459383 | 21609300 | 21609301 | 3459386 | 88193 | 540 | 13 | 1 |
15 | 0 | 805491 | 0 | 1470293675 | 0 | 1470293676 | 0 | 805579 | 0 | 17 |
16 | 4060 | 8037418 | 2585136675 | 2585136741 | 8037796 | 4207 | ||||
17 | 0 | 86221634 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 86223660 | |||
18 | 41301 | 985870522 | ||||||||
19 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |||||
20 | 510489 | |||||||||
21 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |||||
22 | 7319447 | |||||||||
23 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |||||
24 | 117940535 | |||||||||
25 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |||||
26 | 2094480864 |
13 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
14 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
15 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
16 | 21 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
17 | 0 | 25 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
18 | 985883873 | 42110 | 33 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
19 | 0 | 0 | 39 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
20 | 516344 | 49 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |||
21 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 60 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | ||
22 | 7373924 | 73 | 1 | 1 | 0 | |||||
23 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 88 | 0 | 1 | |||
24 | 118573592 | 110 | 1 | |||||||
25 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 130 | ||||
26 | 2103205738 |
Typically, only numbers of connected -regular graphs on
vertices are published for
as a result of the fact that all other numbers can
be derived via simple combinatorics using the following facts:
1. Numbers of not-necessarily-connected -regular graphs on
vertices can be obtained from numbers of connected
-regular graphs on
vertices.
2. Numbers of not-necessarily-connected -regular graphs on
vertices equal the number of not-necessarily-connected
-regular graphs on
vertices (since building complementary graphs defines a bijection
between the two sets).
3. For ,
there do not exist any disconnected
-regular graphs on
vertices.
The numbers of nonisomorphic not necessarily connected regular graphs with nodes, illustrated above, are 1, 2, 2,
4, 3, 8, 6, 22, 26, 176, ... (OEIS A005176;
Steinbach 1990).