Antipodal covers of strongly regular graphs (Q1379836)

The main topic of this paper are antipodal covers of strongly regular graphs. Let \(G\) be a strongly regular graph with an antipodal \(r\)-cover \(H\) of diameter three. Then \(r\leq \lambda+1\). If \(d(G)=2\), then \(r\leq \mu\). In particular, the index \(r\) of an antipodal cover with diameter three of the complete graph \(K_v\) is at most \(v-1\). When \(r=v-1\) the antipodal cover is distance regular. This forecasts that antipodal covers with maximal index are interesting objects. The next result establishes diameters for antipodal covers of some classes of strongly regular graphs (\S\ 2). Proposition. An antipodal cover of \(G\), where \(G\) is the Steiner graph, the line graph of a transversal design \(\text{TD}(s,v)\) or the graph \(K_{s\times m}\) has diameter four when \(s=2\), and diameter three otherwise. Let \(L(H)\) be the line graph of a graph \(H\). A relationship between antipodal covers of a graph and its line graph is investigated in \S\ 3. Theorem 3.1. Let \(H\) be an antipodal \(r\)-cover with diameter \(D>1\) of a graph \(G\). Then \(L(H)\) is an \(r\)-cover with diameter \(D\) of \(L(G)\). If \(H_{d-1}(u)\cap H_{d-1}(v)\) is empty for any edge \(uv\) of \(H\), then \(L(H)\) is an antipodal cover of \(L(G)\). Finally, antipodal covers of complete bipartite graphs and their line graphs are characterized in terms of weak resolvable transversal designs.