Graphs corresponding to closed walks of length are known as -cyclic graphs, or -graphs for short. -graphs are connected by definition. The numbers of -graphs for , 4, ... are 1, 3, 3, 10, 12, 35, 58, 160, 341, 958, 2444, 7242, 21190, 67217, 217335, ... (OEIS A081809; FlowProblems), the first few of which are illustrated above.
It appears that every connected simple graph on more than one node is for some value of . For example, every connected graph on six or fewer nodes with the exception of the complete graph is for some .
These graphs are important when counting graph cycles. This is because the number of (undirected) closed -walks in a graph with adjacency matrix is given by , where denotes the matrix trace, but in order to compute the number of -cycles, all closed -walks that are not cycles must be subtracted.