A graph $G$ is said to have a parity-linked orientation $\phi$ if every even cycle $C_{2k}$ in $G^{\phi}$ is evenly (resp. oddly) oriented whenever $k$ is even (resp. odd). In this paper, this concept is used to provide an affirmative answer to the following conjecture of D. Cui and Y. Hou [D. Cui, Y. Hou, On the skew spectra of Cartesian products of graphs, Electronic J. Combin. 20(2):#P19, 2013]: Let $G=G(X,Y)$ be a bipartite graph. Call the $X\rightarrow Y$ orientation of $G,$ the canonical orientation. Let $\phi$ be any orientation of $G$ and let $Sp_S(G^{\phi})$ and $Sp(G)$ denote respectively the skew spectrum of $G^{\phi}$ and the spectrum of $G.$ Then $Sp_S(G^{\phi}) = {\bf{i}} Sp(G)$ if and only if $\phi$ is switching-equivalent to the canonical orientation of $G.$ Using this result, we determine the switch for a special family of oriented hypercubes $Q_d^{\phi},$ $d\geq 1.$ Moreover, we give an orientation of the Cartesian product of a bipartite graph and a graph, and then determine the skew spectrum of the resulting oriented product graph, which generalizes a result of Cui and Hou. Further this can be used to construct new families of oriented graphs with maximum skew energy.
Acyclic homomorphisms to stars of graph Cartesian products and chordal bipartite graphs