The geometry of t-cliques in k-walk-regular graphs

Abstract

A graph is walk-regular if the number of cycles of length $\ell$ rooted at a given vertex is a constant through all the vertices. For a walk-regular graph $G$ with $d+1$ different eigenvalues and spectrally maximum diameter $D=d$, we study the geometry of its $d$-cliques, that is, the sets of vertices which are mutually at distance $d$. When these vertices are projected onto an eigenspace of its adjacency matrix, we show that they form a regular tetrahedron and we compute its parameters. Moreover, the results are generalized to the case of $k$-walk-regular graphs, a family which includes both walk-regular and distance-regular graphs, and their $t$-cliques or vertices at distance $t$ from each other.