In this paper we deal with a Turán-type problem: given a positive integer n and a forbidden graph H, how many edges can there be in a graph on n vertices without a subgraph H? How does a graph look like if it has this extremal edge number?
The forbidden graph in this article is a clique-path: a path of length k where each edge is extended to an r-clique, r >2. We determine both the extremal number and the extremal graphs for sufficiently large n.
The $kK_{r+1}$ is the union of $k$ disjoint copies of $(r+1)$-clique. Moon [Canad. J. Math. 20 (1968) 95--102] and Simonovits [Theory of Graphs (Proc. colloq., Tihany, 1996)] independently showed that if $n$ is sufficiently large, then $K_{k-1}\vee T_{n-k+1,r}$ is the unique extremal graph for $kK_{r+1}$. In this paper, we consider the graph which has the maximum spectral radius among all graphs without $k$ disjoint cliques. We prove that if $G$ attains the maximum spectral radius over all $n$-vertex $kK_{r+1}$-free graphs for sufficiently large $n$, then $G$ is isomorphic to $K_{k-1}\vee T_{n…
The Erdős--Gallai Theorem states that for $k\geq 3$ every graph on $n$ vertices with more than $\frac{1}{2}(k-1)(n-1)$ edges contains a cycle of length at least $k$. Kopylov proved a strengthening of this result for 2-connected graphs with extremal examples $H_{n,k,t}$ and $H_{n,k,2}$. In this note, we generalize the result of Kopylov to bound the number of $s$-cliques in a graph with circumference less than $k$. Furthermore, we show that the same extremal examples that maximize the number of edges also maximize the number of cliques of any fixed size. Finally, we obtain the extremal number of…
Let r, s >= 2 be integers. Suppose that the number of blue r-cliques in a red/blue coloring of the edges of the complete graph K_n is known and fixed. What is the largest possible number of red s-cliques under this assumption? The well known Kruskal-Katona theorem answers this question for r=2 or s=2. Using the shifting technique from extremal set theory together with some analytical arguments, we resolve this problem in general and prove that in the extremal coloring either the blue edges or the red edges form a clique.
The $(k,r)$-fan is the graph consisting of $k$ copies of the complete graph $K_r$ which intersect in a single vertex, and is denoted by $F_{k,r}$. Erdős, Füredi, Gould and Gunderson [J. Combin. Theory Ser. B 64 (1995) 89--100] determined the maximum number of edges in an $n$-vertex graph that does not contain $F_{k,3}$ as a subgraph. Furthermore, Chen, Gould, Pfender and Wei [J. Combin. Theory Ser. B 89 (2003) 159--171] proved the analogous result on $F_{k,r}$ for the general case $r\ge 3$.In this paper, we show that for sufficiently large $n$, the graphs of order $n$ that contain no copy of $…
The famous Erdős-Rademacher problem asks for the smallest number of $r$-cliques in a graph with the given number of vertices and edges. Despite decades of active attempts, the asymptotic value of this extremal function for all $r$ was determined only recently, by Reiher [Annals of Mathematics, 184 (2016) 683--707]. Here we describe the asymptotic structure of all almost extremal graphs. This task for $r=3$ was previously accomplished by Pikhurko and Razborov [Combinatorics, Probability and Computing, 26 (2017) 138--160].
The \emph{blow-up} of a graph $H$ is the graph obtained from replacing each edge in $H$ by a clique of the same size where the new vertices of the cliques are all different. Erdős et al. and Chen et al. determined the extremal number of blow-ups of stars. Glebov determined the extremal number and found all extremal graphs for blow-ups of paths. We determined the extremal number and found the extremal graphs for the blow-ups of cycles and a large class of trees, when $n$ is sufficiently large. This generalizes their results. The additional aim of our note is to draw attention to a powerful tool…
Generalized Turán problems have been a central topic of study in extremal combinatorics throughout the last few decades. One such problem, maximizing the number of cliques of a fixed order in a graph with fixed number of vertices and bounded maximum degree, was recently completely resolved by Chase. Kirsch and Radcliffe raised a natural variant of this problem where the number of edges is fixed instead of the number of vertices. In this paper, we determine the maximum number of cliques of a fixed order in a graph with fixed number of edges and bounded maximum degree, resolving a conjecture by …
Given a graph $H$ and an integer $p$, the {\it edge blow-up} of $H$, denoted as $H^{p+1}$, is the graph obtained from replacing each edge in $H$ by a clique of size $p+1$ where the new vertices of the cliques are all different. The Turán numbers for edge blow-up of matchings were first studied by Erdős and Moon. In this paper, we determine the Turán numbers for edge blow-up of general graphs.
In extremal graph theory, the problem of finding the elements of a given class of graphs which contain the most cliques traces its routes back to Turán's famous theorem. We consider the implications of the connectivity property of simplicial complexes known as shellability on clique complexes associated with graphs. In this paper, we find the graphs which maximize cliques among all graphs on $n$ vertices with $Δ(G)\leq r$ that have shellable clique complexes.
College of Mathematics and Statistics, Hunan Normal University（湖南师范大学数学与统计学院）；National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore（新加坡南洋国立大学国立教育学院）
Extremal problems on disjoint path covers of graphs
School of Mathematics and Statistics, Key Laboratory of Analytical Mathematics and Applications (Ministry of Education), Fujian Key Laboratory of Analytical Mathematics and Applications (FJKLAMA), Center for Applied Mathematics of Fujian Province (FJNU), Fujian Normal University（福建师范大学数学与统计学院，分析数学及应用教育部重点实验室，福建省分析数学及应用重点实验室（FJKLAMA），福建省应用数学中心（FJNU））
We systematically study a natural problem in extremal graph theory, to minimize the number of edges in a graph with a fixed number of vertices, subject to a certain local condition: each vertex must be in a copy of a fixed graph $H$. We completely solve this problem when $H$ is a clique, as well as more generally when $H$ is any regular graph with degree at least about half its number of vertices. We also characterize the extremal graphs when $H$ is an Erdős-Rényi random graph. The extremal structures turn out to have the similar form as the conjectured extremal structures for a well-studied b…
Let $k_r(n,δ)$ be the minimum number of $r$-cliques in graphs with $n$ vertices and minimum degree $δ$. We evaluate $k_r(n,δ)$ for $δ\leq 4n/5$ and some other cases. Moreover, we give a construction, which we conjecture to give all extremal graphs (subject to certain conditions on $n$, $δ$ and $r$).
The problem of maximising the number of cliques among $n$-vertex graphs from various graph classes has received considerable attention. We investigate this problem for the class of $1$-planar graphs where we determine precisely the maximum total number of cliques as well as the maximum number of cliques of any fixed size. We also precisely characterise the extremal graphs for these problems.
We give lower bounds on the size and total size of clique partitions of a graph in terms of its spectral radius and minimum degree, and derive a spectral upper bound for the maximum number of edge-disjoint $t$-cliques. The extremal graphs attaining the bounds are exactly the block graphs of Steiner $2$-designs and the regular graphs with $K_t$-decompositions, respectively.
This paper investigates some relationship between the algebraic connectivity and the clique number of graphs. We characterize all extremal graphs which have the maximum and minimum the algebraic connectivity among all graphs of order $n$ with the clique number $r$, respectively. In turn, an upper and lower bounds for the clique number of a graph in terms of the algebraic connectivity are obtained. Moreover, a spectral version of the Erdős-Stone theorem in terms of the algebraic connectivity of graphs is presented.
Turán's theorem is a cornerstone of extremal graph theory. It asserts that for any integer $r \geq 2$ every graph on $n$ vertices with more than ${\tfrac{r-2}{2(r-1)}\cdot n^2}$ edges contains a clique of size $r$, i.e., $r$ mutually adjacent vertices. The corresponding extremal graphs are balanced $(r-1)$-partite graphs. The question as to how many such $r$-cliques appear at least in any $n$-vertex graph with $γn^2$ edges has been intensively studied in the literature. In particular, Lovász and Simonovits conjectured in the 1970s that asymptotically the best possible lower bound is given by t…
Motivated by an approach to visualization of high dimensional statistical data given in Hurley and Oldford (2011), this work examines the clique structure of $J_n(m, m-1)$ Johnson graphs. Cliques and maximal cliques are characterized and proved to be of one of only two types. These types are characterized by features of the intersection and of the union of the subsets of [n] = {1, 2, ..., n} which define the vertices of the graph. Clique numbers and clique partition numbers follow. The results on Johnson graphs are connected to results on intersecting families of sets related to extremal set t…
School of Mathematics, Shandong University（山东大学数学学院）；Extremal Combinatorics and Probability Group (ECOPRO), Institute for Basic Science (IBS)（基础科学研究所极端组合与概率组）；Center for Discrete Mathematics, Fuzhou University（福州大学离散数学中心）
Extremal problems concerning the number of complete subgraphs have a long story in extremal graph theory. Let $k_s(G)$ be the number of $s$-cliques in a graph $G$ and $m={{r_m}\choose s}+t_m$, where $0\le t_m\leq r_m$. Edrős showed that $k_s(G)\le {{r_m}\choose s}+{{t_m}\choose{s-1}}$ over all graphs of size $m$ and order $n\geq r_m+1$. %Clearly, $K_{r_m}^{t_m}\cup (n-r_m-1)K_1$ is an extremal graph, where $K_{r_m}^{t_m}$ is the graph by joining a new vertex to $t_m$ vertices of $K_{r_m}$. It is natural to consider an improvement in connected situation: what is the maximum number of $s$-clique…
This paper considers the following question: What is the maximum number of $k$-cliques in an $n$-vertex graph with no $K_t$-minor? This question generalises the extremal function for $K_t$-minors, which corresponds to the $k=2$ case. The exact answer is given for $t\leq 9$ and all values of $k$. We also determine the maximum total number of cliques in an $n$-vertex graph with no $K_t$-minor for $t\leq 9$. Several observations are made about the case of general $t$.
If K is an odd-dimensional flag closed manifold, flag generalized homology sphere or a more general flag weak pseudomanifold with sufficiently many vertices, then the maximal number of edges in K is achieved by the balanced join of cycles. The proof relies on stability results from extremal graph theory. In the case of manifolds we also offer an alternative (very) short proof utilizing the non-embeddability theorem of Flores. The main theorem can also be interpreted without the topological contents as a graph-theoretic extremal result about a class of graphs such that 1) every maximal clique i…
In this paper, we present a sharp upper and lower bounds for the signless Laplacian spectral radius of graphs in terms of clique number. Moreover, the extremal graphs which attain the upper and lower bounds are characterized. In addition, these results disprove the two conjectures on the signless Laplacian spectral radius in [P. Hansen and C. Lucas, Bounds and conjectures for the signless Laplacian index of graphs, Linear Algebra Appl., 432(2010) 3319-3336].
This work examines the problem of clique enumeration on a graph by exploiting its clique covers. The principle of inclusion/exclusion is applied to determine the number of cliques of size $r$ in the graph union of a set $\mathcal{C} = \{c_1, \ldots, c_m\}$ of $m$ cliques. This leads to a deeper examination of the sets involved and to an orbit partition, $Γ$, of the power set $\mathcal{P}(\mathcal{N}_{m})$ of $\mathcal{N}_{m} = \{1, \ldots, m\}$. Applied to the cliques, this partition gives insight into clique enumeration and yields new results on cliques within a clique cover, including expres…
Given a graph $H$ and an integer $p$ ($p\geq 2$), the edge blow-up $H^{p+1}$ of $H$ is the graph obtained from replacing each edge in $H$ by a clique of order $(p+1)$, where the new vertices of the cliques are all distinct. The Turán numbers for edge blow-up of matchings were first studied by Erdős and Moon. Very recently some substantial progress of the extremal graphs for $H^{p+1}$ of larger $p$ has been made by Yuan. The range of Turán numbers for edge blow-up of all bipartite graphs when $p\geq 3$ and the exact Turán numbers for edge blow-up of all non-bipartite graphs when $p\geq χ(H) +1$…
A graph is normal if it admits a clique cover $\mathcal C$ and a stable set cover $\mathcal S$ such that each clique in $\mathcal C$ and each stable set in $\mathcal S$ have a vertex in common. The pair $(\mathcal{C,S})$ is a normal cover of the graph. We present the following extremal property of normal covers. For positive integers $c,s$, if a graph with $n$ vertices admits a normal cover with cliques of sizes at most $c$ and stable sets of sizes at most $s$, then $c+s\geq\log_2(n)$. For infinitely many $n$, we also give a construction of a graph with $n$ vertices that admits a normal cover …
We prove the extremal function for $K_9^=$ minors, where $K_9^=$ denotes the complete graph $K_9$ with two edges removed. In particular, we show that any graph with $n$ vertices and at least $6n - 20$ edges either contains a $K_9^=$ minor or is isomorphic to a graph obtained from disjoint copies of $K_8$ and $K_{2, 2, 2, 2, 2}$ by identifying cliques of size 5. We utilize computer assistance to prove one of our lemmas.
We consider well-quasi-order for classes of permutation graphs which omit both a path and a clique. Our principle result is that the class of permutation graphs omitting $P_5$ and a clique of any size is well-quasi-ordered. This is proved by giving a structural decomposition of the corresponding permutations. We also exhibit three infinite antichains to show that the classes of permutation graphs omitting $\{P_6,K_6\}$, $\{P_7,K_5\}$, and $\{P_8,K_4\}$ are not well-quasi-ordered.
Fix integers $n \ge r \ge 2$. A clique partition of ${[n] \choose r}$ is a collection of proper subsets $A_1, A_2, ..., A_t \subset [n]$ such that $\bigcup_i{A_i \choose r}$ is a partition of ${[n] \choose r}$. Clique partitions are related to design theory, coding theory, projective geometry, and extremal combinatorics. Let $\cp(n,r)$ denote the minimum size of a clique partition of ${[n] \choose r}$. A classical theorem of de Bruijn and Erd\H os states that $\cp(n, 2) = n$ and also determines the extremal configurations. In this paper we study $\cp(n,r)$, and show in general that for each fi…
Given any integers $s,t\geq 2$, we show there exists some $c=c(s,t)>0$ such that any $K_{s,t}$-free graph with average degree $d$ contains a subdivision of a clique with at least $cd^{\frac{1}{2}\frac{s}{s-1}}$ vertices. In particular, when $s=2$ this resolves in a strong sense the conjecture of Mader in 1999 that every $C_4$-free graph has a subdivision of a clique with order linear in the average degree of the original graph. In general, the widely conjectured asymptotic behaviour of the extremal density of $K_{s,t}$-free graphs suggests our result is tight up to the constant $c(s,t)$.
An extremal graph for a graph $H$ on $n$ vertices is a graph on $n$ vertices with maximum number of edges that does not contain $H$ as a subgraph. Let $T_{n,r}$ be the Turán graph, which is the complete $r$-partite graph on $n$ vertices with part sizes that differ by at most one. The well-known Turán Theorem states that $T_{n,r}$ is the only extremal graph for complete graph $K_{r+1}$. Erdös et al. (1995) determined the extremal graphs for intersecting triangles and Chen et al. (2003) determined the maximum number of edges of the extremal graphs for intersecting cliques. In this paper, we dete…
How many cliques can a graph on $n$ vertices have with a forbidden substructure? Extremal problems of this sort have been studied for a long time. This paper studies the maximum possible number of cliques in a graph on $n$ vertices with a forbidden clique subdivision or immersion. We prove for $t$ sufficiently large that every graph on $n \geq t$ vertices with no $K_t$-immersion has at most $2^{t+\log^2 t}n$ cliques, which is sharp apart from the $2^{O(\log^2 t)}$ factor. We also prove that the maximum number of cliques in an $n$-vertex graph with no $K_t$-subdivision is at most $2^{1.817t}n$.…
This paper studies the following question: Given a surface $Σ$ and an integer $n$, what is the maximum number of cliques in an $n$-vertex graph embeddable in $Σ$? We characterise the extremal graphs for this question, and prove that the answer is between $8(n-ω)+2^ω$ and $8n+{3/2} 2^ω+o(2^ω)$, where $ω$ is the maximum integer such that the complete graph $K_ω$ embeds in $Σ$. For the surfaces $\mathbb{S}_0$, $\mathbb{S}_1$, $\mathbb{S}_2$, $\mathbb{N}_1$, $\mathbb{N}_2$, $\mathbb{N}_3$ and $\mathbb{N}_4$ we establish an exact answer.
Nielsen proved that the maximum number of maximal independent sets (MIS's) of size $k$ in an $n$-vertex graph is asymptotic to $(n/k)^k$, with the extremal construction a disjoint union of $k$ cliques with sizes as close to $n/k$ as possible. In this paper we study how many MIS's of size $k$ an $n$-vertex graph $G$ can have if $G$ does not contain a clique $K_t$. We prove for all fixed $k$ and $t$ that there exist such graphs with $n^{\lfloor\frac{(t-2)k}{t-1}\rfloor-o(1)}$ MIS's of size $k$ by utilizing recent work of Gowers and B. Janzer on a generalization of the Ruzsa-Szemerédi problem. We…
We study a very large family of graphs, the members of which comprise disjoint paths of cliques with extremal cliques identified. This broad characterisation naturally generalises those of various smaller families of graphs having well-known chromatic polynomials. We derive a relatively simple formula for an arbitrary member of the subfamily consisting of those graphs whose constituent clique-paths have at least one trivial extremal clique, and use this formula to show that the set of all non-integer chromatic roots of these graphs is closed under multiplication by natural numbers. A well-know…
The famous lower bound $α(G)\geq \sum_{u\in V(G)}\frac{1}{d_G(u)+1}$ on the independence number $α(G)$ of a graph $G$ due to Caro and Wei is known to be tight if and only if the components of $G$ are cliques, and has been generalized several times in the context of large degenerate subsets and small dynamic monopolies. We characterize the extremal graphs for a generalization due to Ackerman, Ben-Zwi, and Wolfovitz. Furthermore, we give a simple proof of a related bound concerning partial incentives due to Cordasco, Gargano, Rescigno, and Vaccaro, and also characterize the corresponding extrema…
In this article we investigate a problem in graph theory, which has an equivalent reformulation in extremal set theory similar to the problems researched in "A general 2-part Erdős-Ko-Rado theorem" by Gyula O.H. Katona, who proposed our problem as well. In the graph theoretic form we examine the clique number of the Xor product of two isomorphic $KG(N,k)$ Kneser graphs. Denote this number with $f(k,N)$. We give lower and upper bounds on $f(k,N)$, and we solve the problem up to a constant deviation depending only on $k$, and find the exact value for $f(2,N)$ if $N$ is large enough. We also comp…
We disprove a conjecture of Nagy on the maximum number of copies N(G,H) of a fixed graph G in a large graph H with prescribed edge density. Nagy conjectured that for all G, the quantity N(G,H) is asymptotically maximised by either a quasi-star or a quasi-clique. We show this is false for infinitely many graphs, the smallest of which has 6 vertices and 6 edges. We also propose some new conjectures for the behaviour of N(G,H), and present some evidence for them.
Fifty years ago Erdős asked to determine the minimum number of $k$-cliques in a graph on $n$ vertices with independence number less than l. He conjectured that this minimum is achieved by the disjoint union of $l-1$ complete graphs of size $\frac{n}{l-1}$. This conjecture was disproved by Nikiforov who showed that the balanced blow-up of a 5-cycle has fewer 4-cliques than the union of 2 complete graphs of size $\frac{n}{2}$. In this paper we solve Erdős' problem for $(k,l)=(3,4)$ and $(k,l)=(4,3)$. Using stability arguments we also characterize the precise structure of extremal examples, confi…
