Self-Similar Graphs

Abstract

For any graph $G$ on $n$ vertices and for any {\em symmetric} subgraph $J$ of $K_{n,n}$, we construct an infinite sequence of graphs based on the pair $(G,J)$. The First graph in the sequence is $G$, then at each stage replacing every vertex of the previous graph by a copy of $G$ and every edge of the previous graph by a copy of $J$ the new graph is constructed. We call these graphs {\em self-similar} graphs. We are interested in delineating those pairs $(G,J)$ for which the chromatic numbers of the graphs in the sequence are bounded. Here we have some partial results. When $G$ is a complete graph and $J$ is a special matching we show that every graph in the resulting sequence is an {\em expander} graph.