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Extremal Graph Theory: David Conlon

This document provides two proofs of Mantel's theorem from extremal graph theory. Mantel's theorem states that any graph on n vertices with no triangles contains at most n^2/4 edges. The first proof uses the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality to show that the number of edges is maximized in a complete bipartite graph. The second proof proceeds by induction and shows that any extremal graph must be bipartite. The document then provides Turan's theorem, which generalizes Mantel's theorem to cliques of size r, and gives two proofs of this result - one by induction and one showing the extremal graphs are complete r-partite.

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145 views3 pages

Extremal Graph Theory: David Conlon

This document provides two proofs of Mantel's theorem from extremal graph theory. Mantel's theorem states that any graph on n vertices with no triangles contains at most n^2/4 edges. The first proof uses the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality to show that the number of edges is maximized in a complete bipartite graph. The second proof proceeds by induction and shows that any extremal graph must be bipartite. The document then provides Turan's theorem, which generalizes Mantel's theorem to cliques of size r, and gives two proofs of this result - one by induction and one showing the extremal graphs are complete r-partite.

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Dương Minh Đức
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Extremal graph theory

David Conlon

Lecture 1
The basic statement of extremal graph theory is Mantels theorem, proved in 1907, which states that
any graph on n vertices with no triangle contains at most n2 /4 edges. This is clearly best possible, as
one may partition the set of n vertices into two sets of size bn/2c and dn/2e and form the complete
bipartite graph between them. This graph has no triangles and bn2 /4c edges.
As a warm-up, we will give a number of different proofs of this simple and fundamental theorem.
Theorem 1 (Mantels theorem) If a graph G on n vertices contains no triangle then it contains
2
at most n4 edges.
First proof Suppose that G has m edges. Let x and y be two vertices in G which are joined by an
edge. If d(v) is the degree of a vertex v, we see that d(x) + d(y) n. This is because every vertex in
the graph G is connected to at most one of x and y. Note now that
X
X
d2 (x) =
(d(x) + d(y)) mn.
x

On the other hand, since

x d(x)

xyE

= 2m, the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality implies that


X

d (x)

2
x d(x))

Therefore

4m2
.
n

4m2
mn,
n
2

and the result follows.

Second proof We proceed by induction on n. For n = 1 and n = 2, the result is trivial, so assume
that we know it to be true for n 1 and let G be a graph on n vertices. Let x and y be two adjacent
vertices in G. As above, we know that d(x)+d(y) n. The complement H of x and y has n2 vertices
and since it contains no triangles must, by induction, have at most (n 2)2 /4 edges. Therefore, the
total number of edges in G is at most
e(H) + d(x) + d(y) 1

(n 2)2
n2
+n1=
,
4
4

where the 1 comes from the fact that we count the edge between x and y twice.

Third proof Let A be the largest independent set in the graph G. Since the neighborhood of every
vertex x is an independent set, we must have d(x) |A|. Let B be the complement of A. Every edge
in G must meet a vertex of B. Therefore, the number of edges in G satisfies


X
|A| + |B| 2 n2
e(G)
d(x) |A||B|
=
.
2
4
xB

Suppose that n is even. Then equality holds if and only if |A| = |B| = n/2, d(x) = |A| for every
x B and B has no internal edges. This easily implies that the unique structure with n2 /4 edges is a
bipartite graph with equal partite sets. For n odd, the number of edges is maximised when |A| = dn/2e
and |B| = bn/2c. Again, this yields a unique bipartite structure.
2
The last proof tells us that not only is bn2 /4c the maximum number of edges in a triangle-free graph
but also that any triangle-free graph with this number of edges is bipartite with partite sets of almost
equal size.
The natural generalisation of this theorem to cliques of size r is the following, proved by Paul Tur
an
in 1941.
Theorem 2 (Tur
ans theorem) If a graph G on n vertices
 2 contains no copy of Kr+1 , the complete
graph on r + 1 vertices, then it contains at most 1 1r n2 edges.
First proof By induction on n. The theorem is trivially true for n = 1, 2, . . . , r. We will therefore
assume that it is true for all values less than n and prove it for n. Let G be a graph on n vertices
which contains no Kr+1 and has the maximum possible number of edges. Then G contains copies of
Kr . Otherwise, we could add edges to G, contradicting maximality.
Let A be a clique of size r and let B be its complement. Since B has size n r and contains no Kr+1 ,

2
edges in B. Moreover, since every vertex in B can have at most r 1
there are at most 1 1r (nr)
2
neighbours in A, the number of edges between A and B is at most (r 1)(n r). Summing, we see
that
 




r
1 (n r)2
1 n2
e(G) = eA + eA,B + eB
+ (r 1)(n r) + 1
= 1
,
2
r
2
r 2
where eA , eA,B and eB are the number of edges in A, between A and B and in B respectively. The
theorem follows.
2
Second proof We again assume that G contains no Kr+1 and has the maximum possible number
of edges. We will begin by proving that if xy
/ E(G) and yz
/ E(G), then xz
/ E(G). This implies
that the property of not being connected in G is an equivalence relation. This in turn will imply that
the graph must be a complete multipartite graph.
Suppose, for contradiction, that xy
/ E(G) and yz
/ E(G), but xz E(G). If d(y) < d(x) then we
may construct a new Kr+1 -free graph G0 by deleting y and creating a new copy of the vertex x, say
x0 . Since any clique in G0 can contain at most one of x and x0 , we see that G0 is Kr+1 -free. Moreover,
|E(G0 )| = |E(G)| d(y) + d(x) > |E(G)|,
contradicting the maximality of G. A similar conclusion holds if d(y) < d(z). We may therefore
assume that d(y) d(x) and d(y) d(z). We create a new graph G00 by deleting x and z and creating
two extra copies of the vertex y. Again, this has no Kr+1 and
|E(G00 )| = |E(G)| (d(x) + d(z) 1) + 2d(y) > |E(G)|,
2

so again we have a contradiction.


We now know that the graph is a complete multipartite graph. Clearly, it can have at most r parts.
We will show that the number of edges is maximised when all of these parts have sizes which differ
by at most one. Indeed, if there were two parts A and B with |A| > |B| + 1, we could increase the
number of edges in G by moving one vertex from A to B. We would lose |B| edges by doing this, but
gain |A| 1. Overall, we would gain |A| 1 |B| 1.
2
This second proof also determines the structure of the extremal graph, that is, it must be r-partite
with all parts having size as close as possible. So if n = mr + q, we get q sets of size m + 1 and r q
sets of size m.

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