Generalized Latin squares of order \(n\) with \(n^2-1\) distinct elements (Q377818)

A generalized Latin square of order \(n\) is an \(n \times n\) matrix such that the elements in each row and each column are different. Let \(G\) be a group with at least \(n\) elements. Consider the multiplication table of an \(n\)-subset of \(G\). By designating equal products by the same letter and unequal products by distinct letters, we obtain a generalized Latin square of order \(n\). Let \(\mathcal{U}\) and \(\mathcal{B}\) be Latin squares of the same order with the same number of distinct elements, and let \(\theta\) be a one-to-one mapping of the elements occurring in \(\mathcal{U}\) onto those occurring in \(\mathcal{B}\). Let \(\theta[\mathcal{U}]\) denote the Latin square obtained by applying \(\theta\) to \(\mathcal{U}\). If \(\mathcal{B}\) can be obtained from \(\theta[\mathcal{U}]\) by a permutation of rows and the same permutation of columns of \(\theta[\mathcal{U}]\), then \(\mathcal{U}\) and \(\mathcal{B}\) are said to be isomorphic. The isomorphism defined in this manner which is due to \textit{G. A. Freiman} [Aequationes Math. 22, 140--152 (1981; Zbl 0489.20020)] is an equivalence relation. We may thus divide the squares into equivalence classes where two squares belong to the same equivalence class if they are isomorphic to one another. We say that a square is embeddable in a group \(G\) if it is isomorphic to the multiplication (or addition) table of a subset of \(G\). The main result of the paper under review is the following: Let \(n\geq 3\) be a positive integer. The number of equivalence classes of generalized Latin squares of order \(n\) with \(n^2-1\) distinct elements is \(4\) if \(n = 3\) and \(5\) if \(n\geq 4\). It is also shown that all these squares are embeddable in groups. Proposition 3.1. The generalized Latin squares of order \(n\) \((n\geq 2)\) with \(n^2-1\) distinct elements are embeddable in groups. The authors, by representing the generalized Latin squares by graphs, obtain the following result as an application of their result on generalized Latin squares. Proposition 4.1. The number of isomorphism classes of graphs on \(n^2+2n-1\) vertices with degree sequence \(\underbrace{2, \dots , 2}_{n^2-2 \; \text{times}} , 4, \underbrace{2n, \dots , 2n}_{2n \; \text{times}}\) is at least \(4\) if \(n = 3\) and at least \(5\) if \(n \geq 4\).