The basis number of the Cartesian product of stars and wheels with different ladders (Q950323)

A basis \({\mathcal B}\) for the cycle space \({\mathcal C}(G)\) of a graph \(G\) is called \(d\)-fold if each edge of \(G\) occurs in at most \(d\) cycles of \({\mathcal B}\). The basis number of a graph \(G\), denoted by \(b(G)\), is the smallest positive integer \(d\) such that \({\mathcal C}(G)\) has a \(d\)-fold basis. Let \(S_n, W_n,L_m, CL_m\) and \(ML_m\) denote the star, wheel, ladder, circular ladder and Möbius ladder, respectively. In this paper the basis number of the Cartesian product of stars and wheels with ladders, circular ladders and Möbius ladders is investigated. It is shown that for each \(n\geq 5\) and \(m\geq 2\), \(3\leq b(S_n\times L_m)\leq 4\) and the same inequalities hold for \(b(W_n\times ML_m)\), \(b(S_n\times ML_m)\) and \(b(S_n\times CL_m)\), but \(b(W_n\times L_m)=3\) for each \(n\geq 4\) and \(m\geq 2\), where \(S_n\) and \(W_n\) have order \(n\) and the other graphs order \(2m\).