Gallery of named graphs


Some of the finite structures considered in graph theory have names, sometimes inspired by the graph's topology, and sometimes after their discoverer. A famous example is the Petersen graph, a concrete graph on 10 vertices that appears as a minimal example or counterexample in many different contexts.

Individual graphs


Highly symmetric graphs

Strongly regular graphs

The strongly regular graph on v vertices and rank k is usually denoted srg.

Symmetric graphs

A symmetric graph is one in which there is a symmetry taking any ordered pair of adjacent vertices to any other ordered pair; the Foster census lists all small symmetric 3-regular graphs. Every strongly regular graph is symmetric, but not vice versa.

Semi-symmetric graphs


Graph families

Complete graphs

The complete graph on vertices is often called the -clique and usually denoted, from German komplett.

Complete bipartite graphs

The complete bipartite graph is usually denoted. For see the section on star graphs. The graph equals the 4-cycle introduced below.

Cycles

The cycle graph on vertices is called the n-cycle and usually denoted. It is also called a cyclic graph, a polygon or the n-gon. Special cases are the triangle, the square, and then several with Greek naming pentagon, hexagon, etc.

Friendship graphs

The friendship graph Fn can be constructed by joining n copies of the cycle graph C3 with a common vertex.

Fullerene graphs

In graph theory, the term fullerene refers to any 3-regular, planar graph with all faces of size 5 or 6. It follows from Euler's polyhedron formula, V – E + F = 2, that there are exactly 12 pentagons in a fullerene and h = V/2 – 10 hexagons. Therefore V = 20 + 2h; E = 30 + 3h. Fullerene graphs are the Schlegel representations of the corresponding fullerene compounds.


An algorithm to generate all the non-isomorphic fullerens with a given number of hexagonal faces has been developed by G. Brinkmann and A. Dress. G. Brinkmann also provided a freely available implementation, called .

Platonic solids

The complete graph on four vertices forms the skeleton of the tetrahedron, and more generally the complete graphs form skeletons of simplices. The hypercube graphs are also skeletons of higher-dimensional regular polytopes.

Truncated solids


Snarks

A snark is a bridgeless cubic graph that requires four colors in any proper edge coloring. The smallest snark is the Petersen graph, already listed above.

Star

A star Sk is the complete bipartite graph K1,k. The star S3 is called the claw graph.

Wheel graphs

The wheel graph Wn is a graph on n vertices constructed by connecting a single vertex to every vertex in an -cycle.