Questions tagged [extremal-graph-theory]
Study of graphs satisfying a property that are maximal or minimal with respect to some parameter. A classic example is Turán's Theorem, which exactly characterizes the densest graphs on $n$ vertices without a $K_t$ subgraph.
253 questions
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Removal of non-isomorphic edges results in the same graph
There exists a (simple unlabeled) graph on 6 nodes with a pair of non-isomorphic edges (i.e., there is no graph automorphism that sends one edge into the other) such that removal of either of them ...
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Cauchy-Schwarz proof of Sidorenko for 3-edge path (Blakley-Roy inequality)
Is there a "Cauchy-Schwarz proof" of the following inequality?
Theorem. Given $f \colon [0,1]^2 \to [0,1]$, one has
$$
\int_{[0,1]^4} f(x,y)f(z,y)f(z,w) \, dxdydzdw \geq \left(\int_{[0,1]^2} f(x,y) \,...
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Largest graphs of girth at least 6
Let $e_6(n)$ be the greatest number of edges in a simple graph with $n$ vertices and girth at least 6.
Let $G_6(n)$ be the set of simple graphs of order $n$ with girth at least 6 and $e_6(n)$ edges.
...
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A graph with few edges everywhere
Given a graph $G(V,E)$ whose edges are colored in two colors: red and blue.
Suppose the following two conditions hold:
for any $S\subseteq V$, there are at most $O(|S|)$ red edges in $G[S]$
for any $...
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Minimal graphs with a prescribed number of spanning trees
As it's long ago since Erdős died and MathOverflow is the second best alternative to him (for discussing personal problems), I'd like to start a fruitful discussion about the following problem that I ...
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Determine or estimate the number of maximal triangle-free graphs on $n$ vertices
Among the collections of the open problems of Paul Erdős on the website of
Professor Fan Chung, there is one called "number of triangle-free graphs".
http://www.math.ucsd.edu/~erdosproblems/erdos/...
user39815
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Graph that minimizes the number of b/w colorings where white vertices have an odd number of black
motivated from a physical context, we are currently interested in the following graph coloring problem:
Given a connected graph $G_n$ with $n$ vertices, how many colorings exist such that all white ...
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Spanning trees: the last darn $1/4$
Let $\Gamma$ be a connected graph. By (Kleitman-West, 1991),
if every vertex of $\Gamma$ has degree $\geq 3$, then $\Gamma$ has a spanning
tree with $\geq n/4+2$ leaves, where $n$ is the number of ...
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Sets of points containing permutations - a Ramsey-type question
The following question arised as a side-question in a geometric problem. It has a "feel" similar to problems in Ramsey-theory, but I have not found any mention of it (also I'm not very familiar with ...
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Strongly connected directed graphs with large directed diameter and small undirected diameter?
This question is an attempt to make progress on domotorp's interesting challenge. This question was originally asked in two parts; the former of which was answered by Ilya Bogdanov, and the latter of ...
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Graph in which no cycle has two crossing chords
Let $G$ be a graph which does not contain a simple cycle $v_1\ldots v_k$ and two "crossing" chords $v_iv_j$ and $v_pv_q$, $i<p<j<q$. An example of such graph is a triangulation of ...
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Induced Paths of Order 4
In a graph $G=(V,E)$ of order $n$, what fraction of the $\binom{n}{4}$ $4$-subsets of $V$ can induce the path of order four?
I looked at this question 30 years ago and was never able to come up with ...
user22090
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Is there a weak strong regularity lemma?
A famous strengthening of Szemerédi's regularity lemma, due to Alon, Fischer, Krivelevich and Szegedy, allows one to partition a graph into a bounded number of pieces in such a way that not only are ...
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How to find or constrain "particularly good" (two-sided) spectral expanders?
I'm new to graph theory, but a response to a question I asked a while ago introduced me to the concept of expander graphs.
A k-regular graph (henceforth "graph") on n nodes has eigenvalues k = λ1 ≥ ...
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Are all almost regular graphs obvious?
Let the maximum and minimum degress of a graph be denoted (as usual) by $\Delta$ and $\delta$ respectively.
A graph is almost regular if $\Delta-\delta=1$.
Now, here is a simple way to generate ...
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Dense triangle-free graphs and their independent sets
Recall that a graph is triangle-free if it does not contain a copy of $K_3$. Also, for a graph $G$, $\alpha(G)$ shall denote its independence number. Lastly, we will write $o(1)$ to denote quantities ...
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Number of triangle-free graphs with prescribed number of edges
This question is posted from StackExchange since it received no answer there.
Let $f(n, e)$ be the number of triangle-free graphs on $n$ vertices and $e$ edges. From empirical evidence, I am motivated ...
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How many n/2-cycles can a cubic graph have
Given a simple cubic graph with $n$ vertices (which implies that $n$ is even), what is a good upper bound on the number of cycles of length $n/2$ it can have?
A random cubic graph has $\Theta((4/3)^n/...
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Graph metric approximating Euclidean metric
I've been reading Wolfram's recent articles about graph/mesh/grid structures as an analogy for physical space, and it seems to me that there will be a problem getting the notion of distance to work ...
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Can I weaken the minimum degree hypothesis in Nash-Williams' triangle decomposition conjecture?
In what follows, all graphs $G$ are $K_3$-divisible (all degrees even, number of edges a multiple of three) on $n$ vertices, where $n$ is not too small.
The famous Nash-Williams conjecture claims ...
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Conjecture on minimum size of graph
Given a graph $G(V,E)$, let $\chi(G)$ be its chromatic number, and $\chi_1(G)$ its 1-improper chromatic number (meaning that each node can have at most 1 neighbor with the same color; or another way ...
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Maximum number of triangles no two of which have a common edge
For $n\in N_+$, define $f(n)$ to be the maximum number of triangles in a graph $G$ with $n$ vertices, taken over all $n$-vertex graphs having the property where no two triangles have a common edge.
Do ...
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Largest number of simple paths between two vertices
Let $G$ be a simple undirected graph, $f(v, u)$ be the number of simple paths between $u$ and $v$ in $G$, $f(G) = \max f(v, u)$ over all pairs of vertices $v, u \in G$.
A recent IOI problem utilized ...
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Asymptotics of subgraph densities in graphons
In Pittel (1989)'s solution to a problem of Knuth (1976) on the expected number of stable matchings between $n$ men and $n$ women under uniform random preferences, it was shown that, as $n \to \infty$,...
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Bounds for number of edges of a graph, given girth and number of vertices
In reading a paper, I came across an affirmation
"a graph of girth $g$ and $q$ vertices has at most $q^{1+(O(1)/g)}$ edges"
In a previous question I asked in this site about it, I was reffered to a ...
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Smallest Connected Graph for Given Degree Sequence
For a given integer sequence $(d_1, d_2,...,d_n)$, a natural question is if such a sequence is graphical, i.e. is a degree sequence of some graph. According to Erdős–Gallai theorem, A sequence of non-...
user39815
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Number of Geodesic Paths Passing Through a Vertex in an Expander Graph
Let $\{G_{n}\}$ be a sequence of $k$-regular expander graphs. For each $n$ assume that each pair of nodes in the graph is transmitting a unit load of traffic and the traffic goes through the minimum ...
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What is the state of the art for the Turán number of $K_{4,4}$?
In Chung and Graham's "Erdős on Graphs: His legacy of unsolved problems," they discuss several open problems concerning Turán numbers for bipartite graphs.
There is a construction which gives graphs ...
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Minimal number of colours in distinguishing colouring of biconnected graphs
A colouring of edges of a graph is distingushing if no non-identity automorphism of the graph preserves this colouring.
Problem. Is it true that each biconnected graph possesses a distinguishing ...
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An extremal problem for graphs having every edge contained in a 4-clique
This is a follow-up to Graphs with many triangles but few complete graphs on 4 vertices
I'm looking for an upper bound for the difference between the number of edges and the number of 4-cliques in a ...
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Embedding of planar graphs
I've recently come across the following lemma.
Lemma (Valiant): A planar graph $G$ with maximum degree $4$ can be embedded in the plane using $O(|V|)$ area in such a way that its vertices are at ...
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What is the correct statement of this Erdös-Gallai-Tuza problem generalizing Turan's triangle theorem?
In Zsolt Tuza's Unsolved combinatorial problems I, Problem 46 is the following conjecture:
Let $G$ be a graph on $n$ vertices. Let $\alpha_1$ be the maximum number of edges of $G$ such that every ...
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Chromatic number of $C_4$-free graphs
How large can the chromatic number of an $n$-vertex $C_4$-free graph be? If the maximum degree of the graph $G$ is $\Delta$, is there a bound of the form
$\chi(G) \leq O(\Delta/\log(\Delta))$ as in ...
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Sum of degree differences for simple graphs
For a simple graph $G$ on $n$ vertices, let us define
$$\mathcal{I}_{n}(G)=\sum_{i,j=1}^{n}|\deg\ x_{i}-\deg\ x_{j}|^{3}.$$
I know that there are many different topological indices defined and ...
user153000
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Spectral lower bounds on the diameter of a graph
There is such a bound, due to Mohar and McKay, using the second-smallest eigenvalue of the Laplacian $\lambda_{2}$:
$$Diam \geq \lceil \frac{4}{n\lambda_{2}} \rceil.$$
This bound is very elegant but ...
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6-regular bipartite graphs with no 8-cycles
I'm looking for simple 6-regular bipartite graphs with no 8-cycles, as small as possible. It doesn't matter if there are 4-cycles or 6-cycles, provided there are no 8-cycles. Such graphs must exist ...
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Maximal class of simple graphs of order $n$ with mutually distinct numbers of spanning trees
This problem in some ways related to this post.
Let $A_n$ be the set of all integers $x$ such that there exist a connected simple graph of order $n$ having precisely $x$ spanning trees. Study the ...
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Maximum number of cycles on regular graphs
Let $G$ be a $d$-regular graph on $n$ vertices. I'm interested in upper bounds on the number of cycles of length $k$ that hold for any such $G$. The regime I'm interested in is:
$d$ is fixed, and $...
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Extremal examples for a folklore lemma on subgraphs of large minimum degree
It's a well known fact that a graph $G$ of average degree $d$ has a subgraph $G'$ of minimum degree at least $d/2$ and that the constant $1/2$ cannot be improved. The proof I know, which proceeds by ...
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Reference request: monochromatic paths in edge-colored complete graphs
Given $k,c \in \mathbb{N}$, let $P(k,c)$ be the minimum $n$ such that no matter how we color the edges of the complete graph $K_n$ with $c$ colors, there is always a monochromatic path of length $k$.
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Graphs with many triangles but few complete graphs on 4 vertices
Let $G$ be a graph on $n$ vertices with $an^2$ edges containing at most $an^2/2$ copies of $K_4$. If there are cubically many triangles, say $cn^3$, then there is at least one edge that is not ...
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Is the feedback vertex number bounded by the maximum number of leaves in a spanning tree?
I have a graph-theoretical conjecture which I think would have been studied before, but for which I cannot find anything in the literature.
Let G be a finite, simple, connected graph. Let the ...
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The maximal number of copies of a graph $T$ in an $H$-free graph
Problem. Let $T,H$ be fixed graphs with $H$ being a tree, not isomorphic to a subgraph of $T$. Let $ex(n,T,H)$ be the maximal number of copies of $T$ in an $H$-free graph on $n$ vertices. Is it always ...
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How many simple cycles can a graph with $n$ vertices and $m$ edges have?
I am mainly interested in the smallest number of simple cycles a graph with $n$ vertices and $m$ edges must have.
For example, if $m\le n-1$, this number is $0$, then if $n\le m \le 3(n-1)/2$, it is $...
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A proper definition of connectivity for hypergraphs
For usual graphs on $n$ vertices, a edge-minimal connected graph is nothing but a spanning tree of this graph. It is well-known that any spanning tree has $n-1$ edges.
I would like to know whether ...
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Blocking $a\to b\to c$ in a DAG with bounded degrees
(This is an (easy-looking) toy question for this one.)
Question. Find the smallest $\alpha$ satisfying the following:
Let $G=(V,E)$ be a finite directed acyclic graph, where each in- and out-degree ...
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Drawing trees on small number of lines in 2D and 3D
Problem. Given a tree do we need fewer lines in 3D than in 2D in order to draw it straightline and crossing-free?
(Asked 01.10.2016 by Alexander Wolff on page 20 of Volume 1 of the Lviv Scottish Book)...
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Inequality of product of discrete cosines
Let $k,a,b,c$ be odd positive integers. Consider the following inequality:
$$
\sum_{x,y \in [k]} \cos^a\bigg(\frac{2\pi}{k}\cdot x\bigg) \cdot \cos^b\bigg(\frac{2\pi}{k}\cdot y\bigg) \cdot \cos^c\bigg(...
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Szemerédi's regularity lemma for binary operations
Szemerédi's regularity lemma is an approximate structure theorem for
all large graphs (symmetric binary relations). There are versions for
multicolored graphs and directed graphs. Is there an ...
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The smallest order of a 4-chromatic graph of given girth
Let $n_4(g)$ denote the smallest order of a $4$-chromatic graph with girth $g$. It is known that $n_4(4)=11$ [2] and $n_4(5)=21$ [1]. By a famous proof of Erdös, it is known that $n_4(g)$ is well-...
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