Consider the following stochastic graph process. We begin with the empty graph on n vertices and add edges one at a time, where each edge is chosen uniformly at random from the collection of potential edges that do not form triangles when added to the graph. The process terminates at a maximal traingle-free graph. Here we analyze the triangle-free process, determining the likely order of magnitude of the number of edges in the final graph. As a corollary we show that the triangle-free process is very likely to produce a Ramsey R(3,t) graph; that is, our analysis of the triangle-free process gives a new proof of the lower bound on R(3,t) previously established by Jeong Han Kim. The techniques introduced extend to the K_4-free process thereby establishing a small improvement in the best known lower bound on the Ramsey number R(4,t).
We determine the smallest simple triangle-free binary matroids that have no five-element independent flat. This solves a special case of a conjecture of Nelson and Norin.
It is shown that for $n\geq 141$, among all triangle-free graphs on $n$ vertices, the complete equibipartite graph is the unique triangle-free graph with the greatest number of cycles.
A triangle-free graph G is called k-existentially complete if for every induced k-vertex subgraph H of G, every extension of H to a (k+1)-vertex triangle-free graph can be realized by adding another vertex of G to H. Cherlin asked whether k-existentially complete triangle-free graphs exist for every k. Here we present known and new constructions of 3-existentially complete triangle-free graphs.
Consider the triangle-free graph process, which starts from the empty graph on $n$ vertices and a random ordering of the possible ${n \choose 2}$ edges; the edges are added in this ordering provided the graph remains triangle free. We will show that there exists a constant $c$ such that no copy of any fixed finite triangle-free graph on $k$ vertices with at least $ck$ edges asymptotically almost surely appears in the triangle-free graph process.
We prove that any $n$-vertex graph whose complement is triangle-free contains $n^2/12-o(n^2)$ edge-disjoint triangles. This is tight for the disjoint union of two cliques of order $n/2$. We also prove a corresponding stability theorem, that all large graphs attaining the above bound are close to being bipartite. Our results answer a question of Alon and Linial, and make progress on a conjecture of Erdős.
Scott conjectured that the class of graphs with no induced subdivision of a given graph is $χ$-bounded. We verify his conjecture for maximal triangle-free graphs.
The triangle-free process begins with an empty graph on n vertices and iteratively adds edges chosen uniformly at random subject to the constraint that no triangle is formed. We determine the asymptotic number of edges in the maximal triangle-free graph at which the triangle-free process terminates. We also bound the independence number of this graph, which gives an improved lower bound on the Ramsey numbers R(3,t): we show R(3,t) > (1-o(1)) t^2 / (4 log t), which is within a 4+o(1) factor of the best known upper bound. Our improvement on previous analyses of this process exploits the self-cor…
This paper proves that for each positive integer $m$, there is a triangle-free planar graph $G$ which is not $(3m+ \lceil \frac m{17} \rceil-1, m)$-choosable.
We consider the triangle-free process: given an integer n, start by taking a uniformly random ordering of the edges of the complete n-vertex graph K_n. Then, traverse the ordered edges and add each traversed edge to an (initially empty) evolving graph - unless its addition creates a triangle. We study the evolving graph at around the time where Θ(n^{3/2 + ε}) edges have been traversed for any fixed ε\in (0,10^{-10}). At that time and for any fixed triangle-free graph F, we give an asymptotically tight estimation of the expected number of copies of F in the evolving graph. For F that is balance…
We study 3-coloring properties of triangle-free planar graphs $G$ with two precolored 4-cycles $C_1$ and $C_2$ that are far apart. We prove that either every precoloring of $C_1\cup C_2$ extends to a 3-coloring of $G$, or $G$ contains one of two special substructures which uniquely determine which 3-colorings of $C_1\cup C_2$ extend. As a corollary, we prove that there exists a constant $D>0$ such that if $H$ is a planar triangle-free graph and $S\subseteq V(H)$ consists of vertices at pairwise distances at least $D$, then every precoloring of $S$ extends to a 3-coloring of $H$. This gives a p…
A construction of Alon yields a sequence of highly pseudorandom triangle-free graphs with edge density significantly higher than one might expect from comparison with random graphs. We give an alternative construction for such graphs.
Aksenov proved that in a planar graph G with at most one triangle, every precoloring of a 4-cycle can be extended to a 3-coloring of G. We give an exact characterization of planar graphs with two triangles in that some precoloring of a 4-cycle does not extend. We apply this characterization to solve the precoloring extension problem from two 4-cycles in a triangle-free planar graph in the case that the precolored 4-cycles are separated by many disjoint 4-cycles. The latter result is used in followup papers to give detailed information about the structure of 4-critical triangle-free graphs embe…
The structure of all triangle free graphs G = (V,E) with |E| - 6|V| + 13α(G) = 0 is determined, yielding an affirmative answer to a question of Stanisław Radziszowski and Donald Kreher.
Heckman and Thomas conjectured that the fractional chromatic number of any triangle-free subcubic graph is at most 14/5. Improving on estimates of Hatami and Zhu and of Lu and Peng, we prove that the fractional chromatic number of any triangle-free subcubic graph is at most 32/11 (which is roughly 2.909).
We show the quarter of a century old conjecture that every $K_4$-free graph with $n$ vertices and $\lfloor n^2/4 \rfloor +k$ edges contains $k$ pairwise edge disjoint triangles.
In this paper, graphs under consideration are always edge-colored. We consider long heterochromatic paths in heterochromatic triangle free graphs. Two kinds of such graphs are considered, one is complete graphs with Gallai colorings, i.e., heterochromatic triangle free complete graphs; the other is heterochromatic triangle free graphs with $k$-good colorings, i.e., minimum color degree at least $k$. For the heterochromatic triangle free graphs $K_n$, we obtain that for every vertex $v\in V(K_n)$, $K_n$ has a heterochromatic $v$-path of length at least $d^c(v)$; whereas for the heterochromatic …
This paper presents infinitely many new examples of triangle-free uniquely 3-edge colorable cubic graphs. The only such graph previously known was given by Tutte in 1976.
A simple binary matroid is called $I_4$-free if none of its rank-4 flats are independent sets. These objects can be equivalently defined as the sets $E$ of points in $PG(n-1,2)$ for which $|E \cap F|$ is not a basis of $F$ for any four-dimensional flat $F$. We prove a decomposition theorem that exactly determines the structure of all $I_4$-free and triangle-free matroids. In particular, our theorem implies that the $I_4$-free and triangle-free matroids have critical number at most $2$.
Using Razborov's flag algebras we show that a triangle-free graph on n vertices contains at most (n/5)^5 cycles of length five. It settles in the affirmative a conjecture of Erdos.
We study the number of edges, $e(G)$, in triangle-free graphs with a prescribed number of vertices, $n(G)$, independence number, $α(G)$, and number of cycles of length four, $\operatorname{N}(C_4;G)$. We in particular show that $$3e(G) - 17n(G) + 35α(G) + \operatorname{N}(C_4;G) \geq 0$$ for all triangle-free graphs $G$. We also characterise the graphs that satisfy this inequality with equality.
The rank of a graph G is defined to be the rank of its adjacency matrix A(G). In this paper we characterize all connected triangle-free graphs with rank 6.
We give an exact characterization of 3-colorability of triangle-free graphs drawn in the torus, in the form of 186 "templates" (graphs with certain faces filled by arbitrary quadrangulations) such that a graph from this class is not 3-colorable if and only if it contains a subgraph matching one of the templates. As a consequence, we show every triangle-free graph drawn in the torus with edge-width at least six is 3-colorable, a key property used in an efficient 3-colorability algorithm for triangle-free toroidal graphs.
A simple binary matroid, viewed as a restriction of a finite binary projective geometry $PG(n-1,2)$, is $I_{1,t}$-free if for any rank-$t$ flat of $PG(n-1,2)$, its intersection with the matroid is not a one-element set. In this paper, we show that the simple $I_{1,t}$-free and triangle-free binary matroids have bounded critical number for any $t \geq 1$.
We prove that the maximum number of triangles in a $C_5$-free graph on $n$ vertices is at most $\frac{1}{2 \sqrt 2} (1 + o(1)) n^{3/2}$, improving an estimate of Alon and Shikhelman.
A decomposition of a graph $G$ is a family of subgraphs of $G$ whose edge sets form a partition of $E(G)$. In this paper, we prove that every triangle-free planar graph $G$ can be decomposed into a $2$-degenerate graph and a matching. Consequently, every triangle-free planar graph $G$ has a matching $M$ such that $G-M$ is online 3-DP-colorable. This strengthens an earlier result in [R. Škrekovski, {\em A Grötzsch-Type Theorem for List Colourings with Impropriety One}, Combin. Prob. Comput. 8 (1999), 493-507] that every triangle-free planar graph is $1$-defective $3$-choosable.
We prove that every connected triangle-free graph on $n$ vertices contains an induced tree on $\exp(c\sqrt{\log n})$ vertices, where $c$ is a positive constant. The best known upper bound is $(2+o(1))\sqrt n$. This partially answers questions of Erdos, Saks, and Sos and of Pultr.
We prove, by means of an exact structural description, that every simple triangle-free binary matroid $M$ with $|M| > \tfrac{33}{128}2^{r(M)}$ has critical number at most $2$.
Paul Erdős suggested the following problem: Determine or estimate the number of maximal triangle-free graphs on $n$ vertices. Here we show that the number of maximal triangle-free graphs is at most $2^{n^2/8+o(n^2)}$, which matches the previously known lower bound. Our proof uses among others the Ruzsa-Szemerédi triangle removal lemma, and recent results on characterizing of the structure of independent sets in hypergraphs.
We prove that every triangle-free $4$-critical graph $G$ satisfies $e(G) \geq \frac{5v(G)+2}{3}$. This result gives a unified proof that triangle-free planar graphs are $3$-colourable, and that graphs of girth at least five which embed in either the projective plane, torus, or Klein Bottle are $3$-colourable, which are results of Grötzsch, Thomassen, and Thomas and Walls. Our result is nearly best possible, as Davies has constructed triangle-free $4$-critical graphs $G$ such that $e(G) = \frac{5v(G) + 4}{3}$. To prove this result, we prove a more general result characterizing sparse $4$-critic…
Given a triangle-free planar graph G and a 9-cycle C in G, we characterize situations where a 3-coloring of C does not extend to a proper 3-coloring of G. This extends previous results when C is a cycle of length at most 8.
We prove a decomposition theorem for the class of triangle-free graphs that do not contain a subdivision of the complete graph on four vertices as an induced subgraph. We prove that every graph of girth at least~5 in this class is 3-colorable.
Thomassen conjectured that every triangle-free planar graph on n vertices has exponentially many 3-colorings, and proved that it has at least 2^[n^(1/12)/20000] distinct 3-colorings. We show that it has at least 2^sqrt(n/362) distinct 3-colorings.
Write f(n) for the minimum number of 4-cliques in graphs of order n with triangle-free complement. Finding f(n) is a particular case of a problem raised by Erdos in 1962. We give an upper bound of f(n) and a matching lower bound when the graph is close to regular.
Let $G$ be a triangle-free graph on $n$ vertices with adjacency matrix eigenvalues $μ_1(G)\geq μ_2(G)\geq \dots \geq μ_n(G)$. In this paper we study the quantity $$μ_1(G)+μ_n(G).$$ We prove that for any triangle-free graph $G$ we have $$μ_1(G)+μ_n(G)\leq (3-2\sqrt{2})n.$$ This was proved for regular graphs by Brandt, we show that the condition on regularity is not necessary. We also prove that among triangle-free strongly regular graphs the Higman-Sims graph achieves the maximum of $$\frac{μ_1(G)+μ_n(G)}{n}.$$
A graph is (m, k)-colourable if its vertices can be coloured with m colours such that the maximum degree of any subgraph induced on ver- tices receiving the same colour is at most k. The k-defective chromatic number for a graph is the least positive integer m for which the graph is (m, k)-colourable. All triangle-free graphs on 8 or fewer vertices are (2, 1)-colourable. There are exactly four triangle-free graphs of order 9 which have 1-defective chromatic number 3. We show that these four graphs appear as subgraphs in almost all triangle-free graphs of order 10 with 1-defective chromatic numb…
We give a randomized algorithm that properly colors the vertices of a triangle-free graph G on n vertices using O(Δ(G)/ log Δ(G)) colors, where Δ(G) is the maximum degree of G. The algorithm takes O(n\Delta2(G)logΔ(G)) time and succeeds with high probability, provided Δ(G) is greater than log^{1+ε}n for a positive constant ε. The number of colors is best possible up to a constant factor for triangle-free graphs. As a result this gives an algorithmic proof for a sharp upper bound of the chromatic number of a triangle-free graph, the existence of which was previously established by Kim and Johan…
We strengthen a result of Dross, Montassier and Pinlou (2017) that the vertex set of every triangle-free planar graph can be decomposed into a set that induces a forest and a set that induces a forest with maximum degree at most $5$, showing that $5$ can be replaced by $3$.
Recently, settling a question of Erdős, Balogh and Petříčková showed that there are at most $2^{n^2/8+o(n^2)}$ $n$-vertex maximal triangle-free graphs, matching the previously known lower bound. Here we characterize the typical structure of maximal triangle-free graphs. We show that almost every maximal triangle-free graph $G$ admits a vertex partition $X\cup Y$ such that $G[X]$ is a perfect matching and $Y$ is an independent set. Our proof uses the Ruzsa-Szemerédi removal lemma, the Erdős-Simonovits stability theorem, and recent results of Balogh-Morris-Samotij and Saxton-Thomason on characte…
We prove two results: 1. A graph $G$ on at least seven vertices with a vertex $v$ such that $G-v$ is planar and $t$ triangles satisfies $|E(G)| \leq 3|V(G)|- 9 + t/3$. 2. For $p=2,3,\ldots,9$, a triangle-free graph $G$ on at least $2p-5$ vertices with no $K_p$-minor satisfies $|E(G)|\leq (p-2)|V(G)| - (p-2)^2$.
The theory of Dvorak, Kral, and Thomas (2015) shows that a 4-critical triangle-free graph embedded in the torus has only a bounded number of faces of length greater than 4 and that the size of these faces is also bounded. We study the natural reduction in such embedded graphs - identification of opposite vertices in 4-faces. We give a computer-assisted argument showing that there are exactly four 4-critical triangle-free irreducible toroidal graphs in which this reduction cannot be applied without creating a triangle. Using this result, we show that every 4-critical triangle-free graph embedde…
We introduce a new approach and prove that the maximum number of triangles in a $C_5$-free graph on $n$ vertices is at most $$(1 + o(1)) \frac{1}{3 \sqrt 2} n^{3/2}.$$ We also show a connection to $r$-uniform hypergraphs without (Berge) cycles of length less than six, and estimate their maximum possible size.
A wheel is a graph consisting of an induced cycle of length at least four and a single additional vertex with at least three neighbours on the cycle. We prove that no Burling graph contains an induced wheel. Burling graphs are triangle-free and have arbitrarily large chromatic number, so this answers a question of Trotignon and disproves a conjecture of Scott and Seymour.
We prove that every triangle-free graph of tree-width t has chromatic number at most ceil((t + 3)/2), and demonstrate that this bound is tight. The argument also establishes a connection between coloring graphs of tree-width t and on-line coloring of graphs of path-width t.
We study extremal type problem arising from the question: What is the maximum number of edge-disjoint non-crossing perfect matchings on a set S of 2n points in the plane such that their union is a triangle-free geometric graph? We approach this problem by considering four different situations of S. In particular, in the general position, we obtain (i) a sufficient condition for the existence of n edge-disjoint non-crossing perfect matchings in the general position whose union is a maximal triangle-free geometric graph, and (ii) a lower bound on the number of edge-disjoint non-crossing perfect …
The rank of a graph is defined to be the rank of its adjacency matrix. A graph is called reduced if it has no isolated vertices and no two vertices with the same set of neighbors. We determine the maximum order of reduced triangle-free graphs with a given rank and characterize all such graphs achieving the maximum order.
A graph $G$ is $(a,b)$-choosable if for any color list of size $a$ associated with each vertex, one can choose a subset of $b$ colors such that adjacent vertices are colored with disjoint color sets. This paper proves that for any integer $m\ge 1$, every finite triangle-free induced subgraph of the triangular lattice is $(5m,2m)$-choosable.
For all $n\ge 9$, we show that the only triangle-free graphs on $n$ vertices maximizing the number $5$-cycles are balanced blow-ups of a 5-cycle. This completely resolves a conjecture by Erdős, and extends results by Grzesik and Hatami, Hladký, Král', Norin and Razborov, where they independently showed this same result for large $n$ and for all $n$ divisible by $5$.
Dvořák, Král' and Thomas gave a description of the structure of triangle-free graphs on surfaces with respect to 3-coloring. Their description however contains two substructures (both related to graphs embedded in plane with two precolored cycles) whose coloring properties are not entirely determined. In this paper, we fill these gaps.
Thomassen conjectured that triangle-free planar graphs have an exponential number of $3$-colorings. We show this conjecture to be equivalent to the following statement: there exists a positive real $α$ such that whenever $G$ is a planar graph and $A$ is a subset of its edges whose deletion makes $G$ triangle-free, there exists a subset $A'$ of $A$ of size at least $α|A|$ such that $G-(A\setminus A')$ is $3$-colorable. This equivalence allows us to study restricted situations, where we can prove the statement to be true.
Thomassen conjectured that triangle-free planar graphs have exponentially many 3-colorings. Recently, he disproved his conjecture by providing examples of such graphs with $n$ vertices and at most $2^{15n/\log_2 n}$ 3-colorings. We improve his construction, giving examples of such graphs with at most $64^{n^{log_{9/2} 3}}<64^{n^{0.731}}$ 3-colorings. We conjecture this exponent is optimal.
It is well-known that there exists a triangle-free planar graph of $n$ verticess such that the largest induced forest has size at most $\frac{5n}{8}$. Salavatipour proved that there is a forest of size at least $\frac{5n}{9.41}$ in any triangle-free planar graph of $n$ vertices. Dross, Montassier and Pinlou improved Salavatipour's bound to $\frac{5n}{9.17}$. In this work, we further improve the bound to $\frac{5n}{9}$. Our technique is inspired by the recent ideas from Lukot'ka, Maz{á}k and Zhu.
One of the oldest results in modern graph theory, due to Mantel, asserts that every triangle-free graphs on $n$ vertices has at most $\lfloor n^2/4\rfloor$ edges. About half a century later Andrásfai studied dense triangle-free graphs and proved that the largest triangle-free graphs on $n$ vertices without independent sets of size $αn$, where $2/5\le α< 1/2$, are blow-ups of the pentagon. More than 50 further years have elapsed since Andrásfai's work. In this article we make the next step towards understanding the structure of dense triangle-free graphs without large independent sets. Notably,…
Consider an assignment of bits to the vertices of a connected graph $Γ(V, E)$ with the property that the value of each vertex is a function of the values of its neighbors. A collection of such assignments is called a storage code of length $|V|$ on $Γ$. In this paper we construct an infinite family of binary linear storage codes on triangle-free graphs with rates arbitrarily close to one.
