Cartesian product of two symmetric starter vectors of orthogonal double covers (Q896101)

An orthogonal double cover of a graph \(H\) with vertex set \(V(H)\) is a collection of subgraphs \(G_i\), \(i \in V(H)\), of the graph \(H\) such that every edge of \(H\) occurs in exactly two subgraphs, and any two subgraphs \(G_i\), \(G_j\) share an edge if and only if the vertices \(i\), \(j\) are adjacent in \(H\). The study of orthogonal double covers was motivated by problems from statistical design theory. The authors establish the existence of orthogonal double covers for the case where \(H\) is a complete bipartite graph \(K_{mn,mn}\). Their results are based on the notion of symmetric starters (see also [\textit{R. El-Shanawany} et al., Discrete Appl. Math. 138, 47--63 (2004; Zbl 1034.05039)]) In particular, they show that the Cartesian product of any two symmetric starters is a symmetric starter with respect to the Cartesian product of the corresponding groups.