Dewar's degree-threshold conjecture for globally rigid vertex-transitive graphs

A graph is vertex-transitive if its automorphism group acts transitively on its vertices. A graph is globally rigid in Rd\mathbb{R}^d if almost all embeddings of its vertices in Rd\mathbb{R}^d are unique up to isometries. The degree of a graph is the common number of neighbours of each vertex when the graph is regular.

Dewar's conjecture. There exists a function f ⁣:N→Nf \colon \mathbb{N}\rightarrow \mathbb{N} with the following property. For d∈Nd\in \mathbb{N}, if GG is a vertex-transitive graph of degree at least f(d)f(d), then GG is globally rigid in Rd\mathbb{R}^d.

This conjecture asks for a dimension-dependent degree threshold guaranteeing global rigidity for vertex-transitive graphs. The source states that the conjecture is positively answered by the paper, so it is solved; the abstract also says that the constant obtained for regularity is best possible.

References

Primary source

Angelo El Saliby, “Highly regular vertex-transitive graphs are globally rigid”, arXiv:2601.11240 (2026).

Progress summary

Refreshed
Claimed solved

A January 2026 paper claims to settle the conjecture with a sharp degree cutoff, but the result has not been independently verified.

Dewar’s conjecture asks whether sufficiently high degree forces every vertex-transitive graph to be globally rigid in dimension dd. A January 2026 paper claims an affirmative answer with the optimal threshold.

Known results

  • Villányi’s earlier result gave global rigidity for degree at least 32d(d+1)\frac{3}{2}d(d+1) in connected vertex-transitive graphs.

January 2026 claimed sharp solution

Angelo El Saliby’s paper Highly regular vertex-transitive graphs are globally rigid claims that every connected vertex-transitive graph of degree at least d(d+1)d(d+1) is globally rigid in Rd\mathbb{R}^d. It also claims sharpness: for every d≥2d\ge 2, a connected vertex-transitive graph of degree d(d+1)−1d(d+1)-1 exists that is not globally rigid in Rd\mathbb{R}^d.

Current status (as of September 2026): The conjecture has a claimed solution with threshold f(d)=d(d+1)f(d)=d(d+1) and claimed sharpness, but the January 2026 preprint remains unverified.

Sources

Solutions 0

No solutions have been posted yet.