Some conditions implying stability of graphs

Abstract

A graph is said to be unstable if the direct product (also called the canonical double cover of ) has automorphisms that do not come from automorphisms of its factors and . It is nontrivially unstable if it is unstable, connected, nonbipartite, and distinct vertices have distinct sets of neighbours. In this paper, we prove two sufficient conditions for stability of graphs in which every edge lies on a triangle, revising an incorrect claim of Surowski and filling in some gaps in the proof of another one. We also consider triangle‐free graphs, and prove that there are no nontrivially unstable triangle‐free graphs of diameter 2. An interesting construction of nontrivially unstable graphs is given and several open problems are posed.