An extension of Tur\'an's Theorem, uniqueness and stability

We determine the maximum number of edges of an $n$-vertex graph $G$ with the property that none of its $r$-cliques intersects a fixed set $M\subset V(G)$. For $(r-1)|M|\ge n$, the $(r-1)$-partite Turan graph turns out to be the unique extremal graph. For $(r-1)|M|<n$, there is a whole family of extremal graphs, which we describe explicitly. In addition we provide corresponding stability results.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure; outline of the proof added and other referee's comments incorporate

Large joints in graphs

We show that if G is a graph of sufficiently large order n containing as many r-cliques as the r-partite Turan graph of order n; then for some C>0 G has more than Cn^(r-1) (r+1)-cliques sharing a common edge unless G is isomorphic to the the r-partite Turan graph of order n. This structural result generalizes a previous result that has been useful in extremal graph theory.Comment: 9 page

The Erd\H{o}s-Rothschild problem on edge-colourings with forbidden monochromatic cliques

Let $\mathbf{k} := (k_1,\dots,k_s)$ be a sequence of natural numbers. For a graph $G$, let $F(G;\mathbf{k})$ denote the number of colourings of the edges of $G$ with colours $1,\dots,s$ such that, for every $c \in \{1,\dots,s\}$, the edges of colour $c$ contain no clique of order $k_c$. Write $F(n;\mathbf{k})$ to denote the maximum of $F(G;\mathbf{k})$ over all graphs $G$ on $n$ vertices. This problem was first considered by Erd\H{o}s and Rothschild in 1974, but it has been solved only for a very small number of non-trivial cases. We prove that, for every $\mathbf{k}$ and $n$, there is a complete multipartite graph $G$ on $n$ vertices with $F(G;\mathbf{k}) = F(n;\mathbf{k})$. Also, for every $\mathbf{k}$ we construct a finite optimisation problem whose maximum is equal to the limit of $\log_2 F(n;\mathbf{k})/{n\choose 2}$ as $n$ tends to infinity. Our final result is a stability theorem for complete multipartite graphs $G$, describing the asymptotic structure of such $G$ with $F(G;\mathbf{k}) = F(n;\mathbf{k}) \cdot 2^{o(n^2)}$ in terms of solutions to the optimisation problem.Comment: 16 pages, to appear in Math. Proc. Cambridge Phil. So

Problems in extremal graph theory

We consider a variety of problems in extremal graph and set theory. The {\em chromatic number} of $G$, $\chi(G)$, is the smallest integer $k$ such that $G$ is $k$-colorable. The {\it square} of $G$, written $G^2$, is the supergraph of $G$ in which also vertices within distance 2 of each other in $G$ are adjacent. A graph $H$ is a {\it minor} of $G$ if $H$ can be obtained from a subgraph of $G$ by contracting edges. We show that the upper bound for $\chi(G^2)$ conjectured by Wegner (1977) for planar graphs holds when $G$ is a $K_4$-minor-free graph. We also show that $\chi(G^2)$ is equal to the bound only when $G^2$ contains a complete graph of that order. One of the central problems of extremal hypergraph theory is finding the maximum number of edges in a hypergraph that does not contain a specific forbidden structure. We consider as a forbidden structure a fixed number of members that have empty common intersection as well as small union. We obtain a sharp upper bound on the size of uniform hypergraphs that do not contain this structure, when the number of vertices is sufficiently large. Our result is strong enough to imply the same sharp upper bound for several other interesting forbidden structures such as the so-called strong simplices and clusters. The {\em $n$-dimensional hypercube}, $Q_n$, is the graph whose vertex set is $\{0,1\}^n$ and whose edge set consists of the vertex pairs differing in exactly one coordinate. The generalized Tur\'an problem asks for the maximum number of edges in a subgraph of a graph $G$ that does not contain a forbidden subgraph $H$. We consider the Tur\'an problem where $G$ is $Q_n$ and $H$ is a cycle of length $4k+2$ with $k\geq 3$. Confirming a conjecture of Erd{\H o}s (1984), we show that the ratio of the size of such a subgraph of $Q_n$ over the number of edges of $Q_n$ is $o(1)$, i.e. in the limit this ratio approaches 0 as $n$ approaches infinity

Tur\'annical hypergraphs

This paper is motivated by the question of how global and dense restriction sets in results from extremal combinatorics can be replaced by less global and sparser ones. The result we consider here as an example is Turan's theorem, which deals with graphs G=([n],E) such that no member of the restriction set consisting of all r-tuples on [n] induces a copy of K_r. Firstly, we examine what happens when this restriction set is replaced just by all r-tuples touching a given m-element set. That is, we determine the maximal number of edges in an n-vertex such that no K_r hits a given vertex set. Secondly, we consider sparse random restriction sets. An r-uniform hypergraph R on vertex set [n] is called Turannical (respectively epsilon-Turannical), if for any graph G on [n] with more edges than the Turan number ex(n,K_r) (respectively (1+\eps)ex(n,K_r), no hyperedge of R induces a copy of K_r in G. We determine the thresholds for random r-uniform hypergraphs to be Turannical and to epsilon-Turannical. Thirdly, we transfer this result to sparse random graphs, using techniques recently developed by Schacht [Extremal results for random discrete structures] to prove the Kohayakawa-Luczak-Rodl Conjecture on Turan's theorem in random graphs.Comment: 33 pages, minor improvements thanks to two referee