Reaction graphs (Q1270637)

A degenerate rearrangement \(\rho\) redefines the edge set, while preserving the vertices, to give a new graph \(\Gamma'=(V,E')\) isomorphic to \(\Gamma=(V,E)\). We can recover \(\Gamma\) from \(\Gamma'\) by applying a permutation \(\pi\) on \(V\) which takes \(E'\) to \(E\). Let the vertices \(a,b,\dots\) from \(V\) be labelled by \(1,2,\dots\) through function \(\lambda:\{a,b,\dots\}\to \{1,2,\dots\}\). Then the rearrangement \(\rho\) gives some permutation \(r\) on \(\{1,2,\dots\}\). If \(n=| V| \), then we have \(n!\) labelling functions. We choose some fixed subgroup \(H\) of \(\Aut(\Gamma)\), and define two labellings of \(\Gamma\) to be equivalent (with respect to \(H\)) if some element of \(H\) converts one labelling into the other. This equivalence relation partitions the \(n!\) labellings \(\lambda\) of \(\Gamma\) into a set \(\Omega\) of \(n!/| H| \) equivalence classes \(\alpha=[\lambda]\). A useful tool for studying \(\Gamma\) is the reaction graph \(R\). This is a directed graph with vertex set \(\Omega\) and with an arc from a vertex \(\alpha\) to a vertex \(\beta\) if and only if some labelling in the class \(\beta\) can be obtained from a labelling in \(\alpha\) by a single application of the rearrangement. Theorem. The reaction graph \(R\) is isomorphic to the orbital graph for the group \(G=S_n\) acting on the set \(\Omega\) of cosets of its subgroup \(H\), corresponding to the orbital \(\Phi\) containing the pair \((H,Hr)\). The authors construct reaction graphs from Cayley diagrams by contracting edges, and use graph embeddings in surfaces to determine the automorphism groups of this graphs. These ideas apply to the rearrangements of the \(P_7^{3-}\), together with some purely mathematical examples of reaction graphs.