Integral Cayley graphs of symmetric groups on transpositions

Abstract

We study subsets $T$ consisting of some transpositions $(i,j)$ of the symmetric group $S_n$ on $\{1,\dots,n\}$ such that the Cayley graph $Γ_T:=Cay(S_n,T)$ is an integral graph, i.e., all eigenvalues of an adjacency matrix of $Γ_T$ are integers. Graph properties of $Γ_T$ are determined in terms of ones of the graph $G_T$ whose vertex set is $\{1,\dots,n\}$ and $\{i,j\}$ is an edge if and only if $(i,j)\in T$. Here we prove that if $G_T$ is a tree then $Γ_T$ is integral if and only if $T$ is isomorphic to the star graph $K_{1,n-1}$, answering Problem 5 of [Electron. J. Comnin., 29(2) (2022) \# P2.9]. Problem 6 of the latter article asks to find necessary and sufficient conditions on $T$ for integralness of $Cay(S_n,T)$ without any further assumption on $T$. We show that if $G_T$ is a graph which we call it a ``generalized complete multipartite graph" then $Cay(S_n,T)$ is integral. We conjecture that $Cay(S_n,T)$ is integral only if $G_T$ is a generalized complete multipartitie graph. To support the latter conjecture we show its validity whenever $G_T$ is some classes of graphs including cycles and cubic graphs.