Nonexistence of almost Moore digraphs of degrees 4 and 5 with self-repeats (Q2699647)

Summary: An almost Moore \((d,k)\)-digraph is a regular digraph of degree \(d>1\), diameter \(k>1\) and order \(N(d,k)=d+d^2+\cdots +d^k\). So far, their existence has only been shown for \(k=2\), whilst it is known that there are no such digraphs for \(k=3, 4\) and for \(d=2, 3\) when \(k\geqslant 3\). Furthermore, under certain assumptions, the nonexistence for the remaining cases has also been shown. In this paper, we prove that \((4,k)\) and \((5,k)\)-almost Moore digraphs with self-repeats do not exist for \(k\geqslant 5\).