Distinguishing partitions of complete multipartite graphs

Michael Goff

Published 2013-01-19Version 1

A \textit{distinguishing partition} of a group $X$ with automorphism group ${aut}(X)$ is a partition of $X$ that is fixed by no nontrivial element of ${aut}(X)$. In the event that $X$ is a complete multipartite graph with its automorphism group, the existence of a distinguishing partition is equivalent to the existence of an asymmetric hypergraph with prescribed edge sizes. An asymptotic result is proven on the existence of a distinguishing partition when $X$ is a complete multipartite graph with $m_1$ parts of size $n_1$ and $m_2$ parts of size $n_2$ for small $n_1$, $m_2$ and large $m_1$, $n_2$. A key tool in making the estimate is counting the number of trees of particular classes.