On the existence of small strictly Neumaier graphs

A Neumaier graph is a non-complete edge-regular graph containing a regular clique. In this work, we prove several results on the existence of small strictly Neumaier graphs. In particular, we present a theoretical proof of the uniqueness of the smallest strictly Neumaier graph with parameters $(16,9,4;2,4)$, we establish the existence of a strictly Neumaier graph with parameters $(25,12,5;2,5)$, and we disprove the existence of strictly Neumaier graphs with parameters $(25,16,9;3,5)$, $(28,18,11;4,7)$, $(33,24,17;6,9)$, $(35,22,12;3,5)$ and $(55,34,18;3,5)$. Our proofs use combinatorial techniques and a novel application of integer programming methods.