Conditional connectivity of bubble sort graphs

A subset F ? V (G) is called an R ^k -vertex-cut of a graph G if G ? F is disconnected and each vertex of G ? F has at least k neighbors in G ? F. The R ^k -vertex-connectivity of G, denoted by κ ^k (G), is the cardinality of a minimum R ^k -vertex-cut of G. Let B _n be the bubble sort graph of dimension n. It is known that κ _k (B _n ) = 2 ^k (n ? k ? 1) for n ≥ 2k and k = 1, 2. In this paper, we prove it for k = 3 and conjecture that it is true for all k ∈ N. We also prove that the connectivity cannot be more than conjectured.