On the size of spheres of relations with a transitive group of automorphisms

Abstract

Let $Γ=(V,E)$ be a point-transitive reflexive relation. Let $v\in V$ and put $r=|Γ(v)|.$ Also assume $Γ^j(v)\cap Γ^{-}(v)=\{v\}$. Then $$ |Γ^{j} (v)\setminus Γ^{j-1} (v)| \ge r-1.$$ In particular we have $ |Γ^{j} (v)| \ge 1+(r-1)j.$ The last result confirms a recent conjecture of Seymour in the case vertex-transitive graphs. Also it gives a short proof for the validity of the Caccetta-Häggkvist conjecture for vertex-transitive graphs and generalizes an additive result of Shepherdson.