Two-fold automorphisms of graphs

In this paper we shall present a natural generalisation of the notion of automorphism of a graph or digraph G, namely a two-fold automorphism. This is a pair (α, β) of permutations of the vertex set V(G) which acts on ordered pairs of vertices of G in the natural way. The action of (α, β) on all such ordered pairs gives a graph which is two-fold isomorphic to G. When α = β the two-fold automorphism is just a usual automorphism. Our main results concern those graphs which admit a two-fold automorphism with α = β.