Iterated clique graphs with increasing diameters

A simple argument by Hedman shows that the diameter of a clique graph G differs by at most one from that of K(G), its clique graph. Hedman described examples of a graph G such that diam(K(G)) = diam(G) + 1 and asked in general about the existence of graphs such that diam(Kⁱ(G)) = diam(G) + i. Examples satisfying this equality for i = 2 have been described by Peyrat, Rall, and Slater and independently by Balakrishnan and Paulraja. The authors of the former work also solved the case i = 3 and i = 4 and conjectured that such graphs exist for every positive integer i. The cases i ≥ 5 remained open. In the present article, we prove their conjecture. For each positive integer i, we describe a family of graphs G such that diam(Kⁱ(G)) = diam(G) + i. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J. Graph Theory 28: 147–154, 1998