Distance-regular graphs and \((\alpha,\beta)\)-geometries (Q2573758)

An \((\alpha,\beta)\)-geometry with parameters \((s, t)\) is an incidence structure \(S\) satisfying the following conditions. 1. \(S\) is a partial linear space of order \((s, t)\), i.e., each line is incident with exactly \(s+ 1\) points and each point is incident with exactly \(t+1\) lines. 2. Each antiflag (non-incident point-line pair) of \(S\) has incidence number either \(\alpha\) or \(\beta\). If \(\Gamma\) is a graph and \(x\) is one of its vertices, then the set of vertices at distance \(i\) from \(x\) we can denote \(\Gamma_i(x)\). A connected graph \(\Gamma\) with diameter \(d\geq 2\) is distance-regular if there exist integers \(b_i\), \(i\in\{0,\dots, d-1\}\) and \(c_i\), \(i\in \{1,\dots, d\}\) such that the following conditions are satisfied. 1. \(\Gamma\) is regular with valency \(b_0\). 2. For any two vertices \(x\) and \(y\) at distance \(i\in\{1,\dots, d-1\}\) in \(\Gamma\) the vertex \(y\) is adjacent to precisely \(c_i\) vertices in \(\Gamma_{i-1}(x)\) and to precisely \(b_i\) vertices in \(\Gamma_{i+ 1}(x)\). 3. For any two vertices \(x\) and \(y\) at distance \(d\) the vertex \(y\) is adjacent to precisely \(c_d\) vertices in \(\Gamma_{d-1}(x)\). The authors study the relation between distance-regular graphs and \((\alpha,\beta)\)-geometries in two different ways. They give necessary and sufficient conditions for neighbourhood geometry of a distance regular graph to be an \((\alpha,\beta)\)-geometry, and describe some examples.