A construction of a pair of strongly regular graphs Fn and Fin of type L2~-1 (4n -1) from a pair of skew-symmetric association schemes W, W t of order 4n -1 is presented. Examples of graphs with the same parameters as Fn and F~, i.e., of type L2n-1 (4n -1), were known only if 4n -1 = pS, where p is a prime. The first new graph appearing in the series has parameters (v, k, A) = (225, 98, 45). A 4-vertex condition for relations of a skew-symmetric association scheme (very similar to one for the strongly regular graphs) is introduced and is proved to hold in any case. This has allowed us to check the 4-vertex condition for Fn and Fin, thus to prove that Fn and F~ are not rank three graphs if n > 2.
IntroductionThe main aim of this paper is to describe a construction of strongly regular graphs (SRG, for short) of type L:n-l(4n -1) from a pair of skew-symmetric Hadamard matrices of order 4n (Theorem 1 and Corollary 1). Examples of such graphs were known only if 4n -1 = pS, p is a prime. But it is well-known that skew-symmetric Hadamard matrices exist for a much wider range of n, cf., e.g., Hall [9]. In fact, the first new SRG, which appears in our series, has parameters (v, k, A) = (225, 98, 45). In the catalog of SRGs with small v due to Brouwer [2] there are no examples of graphs with the latter set of parameters. Some statements equivalent to Theorem 1 and Corollary 1 were announced by the author in [6].Questions concerning some further symmetry of our SRG are considered in the paper as well. There is the classification of rank three graphs due to Kantor and Liebler [13] and Liebeck [14], which uses the classification of finite simple groups. But we are able to prove (Theorem 2) using the so-called 4-vertex condition for an SRG, ( see, e.g., Hestenes and Higman [10]) that our graphs are not rank three graphs if n ) 2.Among the many different combinatorial objects associated with a skew-symmetric Hadamard matrix H of order 4n (see Reid and Brown [17], Delsarte [4], Szekeres [18], Hall [9]) there is a 2-class association scheme W = W(H) which we *Present address: Mathematics Subject Classification (1991). 05E30.