Regular Graph
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 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).
24-cell