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

Constructing graphs with no immersion of large complete graphs

In 1989, Lescure and Meyniel proved, for $d=5, 6$, that every $d$-chromatic graph contains an immersion of $K_d$, and in 2003 Abu-Khzam and Langston conjectured that this holds for all $d$. In 2010, DeVos, Kawarabayashi, Mohar, and Okamura proved this conjecture for $d = 7$. In each proof, the $d$-chromatic assumption was not fully utilized, as the proofs only use the fact that a $d$-critical graph has minimum degree at least $d - 1$. DeVos, Dvo\v{r}\'ak, Fox, McDonald, Mohar, and Scheide show the stronger conjecture that a graph with minimum degree $d-1$ has an immersion of $K_d$ fails for $d=10$ and $d\geq 12$ with a finite number of examples for each value of $d$, and small chromatic number relative to $d$, but it is shown that a minimum degree of $200d$ does guarantee an immersion of $K_d$. In this paper we show that the stronger conjecture is false for $d=8,9,11$ and give infinite families of examples with minimum degree $d-1$ and chromatic number $d-3$ or $d-2$ that do not contain an immersion of $K_d$. Our examples can be up to $(d-2)$-edge-connected. We show, using Haj\'os' Construction, that there is an infinite class of non-$(d-1)$-colorable graphs that contain an immersion of $K_d$. We conclude with some open questions, and the conjecture that a graph $G$ with minimum degree $d - 1$ and more than $\frac{|V(G)|}{1+m(d+1)}$ vertices of degree at least $md$ has an immersion of $K_d$

The strong chromatic index of 1-planar graphs

The chromatic index $\chi'(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the smallest $k$ for which $G$ admits an edge $k$-coloring such that any two adjacent edges have distinct colors. The strong chromatic index $\chi'_s(G)$ of $G$ is the smallest $k$ such that $G$ has a proper edge $k$-coloring with the condition that any two edges at distance at most 2 receive distinct colors. A graph is 1-planar if it can be drawn in the plane so that each edge is crossed by at most one other edge. In this paper, we show that every graph $G$ with maximum average degree $\bar{d}(G)$ has $\chi'_{s}(G)\le (2\bar{d}(G)-1)\chi'(G)$. As a corollary, we prove that every 1-planar graph $G$ with maximum degree $\Delta$ has $\chi'_{\rm s}(G)\le 14\Delta$, which improves a result, due to Bensmail et al., which says that $\chi'_{\rm s}(G)\le 24\Delta$ if $\Delta\ge 56$