Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 February 2013
Let $R$ be a ring and
$Z(R)$ be the set of all zero-divisors of
$R$. The total graph of
$R$, denoted by
$T(\Gamma (R))$ is a graph with all elements of
$R$ as vertices, and two distinct vertices
$x, y\in R$ are adjacent if and only if
$x+ y\in Z(R)$. Let the regular graph of
$R$,
$\mathrm{Reg} (\Gamma (R))$, be the induced subgraph of
$T(\Gamma (R))$ on the regular elements of
$R$. In 2008, Anderson and Badawi proved that the girth of the total graph and the regular graph of a commutative ring are contained in the set
$\{ 3, 4, \infty \} $. In this paper, we extend this result to an arbitrary ring (not necessarily commutative). We also prove that if
$R$ is a reduced left Noetherian ring and
$2\not\in Z(R)$, then the chromatic number and the clique number of
$\mathrm{Reg} (\Gamma (R))$ are the same and they are
${2}^{r} $, where
$r$ is the number of minimal prime ideals of
$R$. Among other results, we show that if
$R$ is a semiprime left Noetherian ring and
$\mathrm{Reg} (R)$ is finite, then
$R$ is finite.