Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2020/ii/paper-3/17g/i/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2020 ii Paper 3 17G i Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
Turan theorem states that among all -vertex graphs containing no , the maximum number of edges is attained by the Turan graph , the complete multipartite graph whose part sizes differ by at most one.
Here is the Zykov symmetrization proof. Start with an extremal -free graph. If nonadjacent vertices have different neighbourhoods, replace the lower-degree vertex by a clone of the higher-degree one: delete all its incident edges and join it to precisely the neighbours of the other vertex. This does not decrease the number of edges and cannot create a , because a clique using the clone corresponds to one using the original vertex. Repeating the operation, with the standard tie-breaking that merges equal-neighbourhood classes, produces a complete multipartite extremal graph. It has at most nonempty parts, since choosing one vertex from each part gives a clique.
If two part sizes satisfy , moving one vertex from the larger part to the smaller changes the number of cross-edges byThus an extremal partition has exactly parts whose sizes differ by at most one. This is and proves the theorem. For it is Mantel theorem: a triangle-free graph on vertices has at most edges.
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