Isomorphisms and traversability of directed path graphs

The concept of a line digraph is generalized to that of a directed path graph. The directed path graph Pₖ(D) of a digraph D is obtained by representing the directed paths on k vertices of D by vertices. Two vertices are joined by an arc whenever the corresponding directed paths in D form a directed path on k+1 vertices or form a directed cycle on k vertices in D. In this introductory paper several properties of P₃(D) are studied, in particular with respect to isomorphism and traversability. In our main results, we characterize all digraphs D with P₃(D) ≅ D, we show that P₃(D₁) ≅ P₃(D₂) "almost always" implies D₁ ≅ D₂, and we characterize all digraphs with Eulerian or Hamiltonian P₃-graphs.