Arc-transitive cycle decompositions of tetravalent graphs

A cycle decomposition of a graph Γ is a set C of cycles of Γ such that every edge of Γ belongs to exactly one cycle in C. Such a decomposition is called arc-transitive if the group of automorphisms of Γ that preserve C setwise acts transitively on the arcs of Γ . In this paper, we study arc-transitive cycle decompositions of tetravalent graphs. In particular, we are interested in determining and enumerating arc-transitive cycle decompositions admitted by a given arc-transitive tetravalent graph. Among other results we show that a connected tetravalent arc-transitive graph is either 2-arc-transitive, or is isomorphic to the medial graph of a reflexible map, or admits exactly one cycle structure. © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.