The conjugacy class graphs of non-abelian 3-groups

Abstract

A graph is formed by a pair of vertices and edges. It can be related to groups by using the groups’ properties for its vertices and edges. The set of vertices of the graph comprises the elements or sets from the group while the set of edges of the graph is the properties and condition for the graph. A conjugacy class of an element  is the set of elements that are conjugated with . Any element of a group , labelled as , is conjugated to  if it satisfies  for some elements  in  with its inverse . A conjugacy class graph of a group   is defined when its vertex set is the set of non-central conjugacy classes of  . Two distinct vertices   and   are connected by an edge if and only if their cardinalities are not co-prime, which means that the order of the conjugacy classes of  and  have common factors. Meanwhile, a simple graph is the graph that contains no loop and no multiple edges. A complete graph is a simple graph in which every pair of distinct vertices is adjacent. Moreover, a  -group is the group with prime power order. In this paper, the conjugacy class graphs for some non-abelian 3-groups are determined by using the group’s presentations and the definition of conjugacy class graph. There are two classifications of the non-abelian 3-groups which are used in this research. In addition, some properties of the conjugacy class graph such as the chromatic number, the dominating number, and the diameter are computed. A chromatic number is the minimum number of vertices that have the same colours where the adjacent vertices have distinct colours. Besides, a dominating number is the minimum number of vertices that is required to connect all the vertices while a diameter is the longest path between any two vertices. As a result of this research, the conjugacy class graphs of these groups are found to be complete graphs with chromatic number, dominating number and diameter that are equal to eight, one and one, respectively.