A note on the growth of transitive graphs (Q1263596)

A connected, locally finite graph X is said to have linear growth if the sequence \(\{\beta_ n\}\), where \(\beta_ n\) denotes the number of vertices at distance \(\leq n\) from arbitrarily chosen vertex, satisfies \(\beta_ n\leq an+b\) for some a and b. The main result is that if such a graph X is vertex-transitive, then it has more than one end. It is shown, moreover, that the maximum number of disjoint 1-paths in any end of X is finite and no end is free, whence it follows that X has exactly two ends. These results provide a characterization of strips beyond those of \textit{H. A. Jung} and the reviewer [Eur. J. Comb. 59, 149-162 (1984; Zbl 0547.05040)].