Automorphism Groups of Wreath Product Digraphs

Abstract

We generalize a classical result of Sabidussi that was improved by Hemminger, to the case of directed color graphs. The original results give a necessary and sufficient condition on two graphs, $C$ and $D$, for the automorphsim group of the wreath product of the graphs, ${\rm Aut}(C\wr D)$ to be the wreath product of the automorphism groups ${\rm Aut}(C)\wr {\rm Aut}(D)$. Their characterization generalizes directly to the case of color graphs, but we show that there are additional exceptional cases in which either $C$ or $D$ is an infinite directed graph. Also, we determine what ${\rm Aut}(C \wr D)$ is if ${\rm Aut}(C \wr D) \neq {\rm Aut} (C) \wr {\rm Aut} (D)$, and in particular, show that in this case there exist vertex-transitive graphs $C'$ and $D'$ such that $C' \wr D' = C \wr D$ and ${\rm Aut} (C\wr D) = {\rm Aut} (C') \wr {\rm Aut}(D')$.