Co-cliques and star complements in extremal strongly regular graphs Original Research Article

Suppose that the positive integer μ is the eigenvalue of largest multiplicity in an extremal strongly regular graph G. By interlacing, the independence number of G is at most 4μ2 + 4μ − 2. Star complements are used to show that if this bound is attained then either (a) μ = 1 and G is the Schläfli graph or (b) μ = 2 and G is the McLaughlin graph.