The Erdős-Stone theorem says that, for a fixed graph with chromatic number ,
The lower bound comes from the balanced Turan graph with parts; the theorem supplies the matching asymptotic upper bound. Here and below, all forbidden graphs and blow-up parameters are fixed as .
First obtain an almost spanning, almost complete multipartite core. Put . We give the stability argument, rather than infer pointwise degree bounds by differentiating an asymptotic edge-count formula. Suppose first .
We need two elementary ingredients. First, positive homomorphism density of forces a fixed complete multipartite graph . To see this, perform vertex cloning in a graph, replacing one vertex by independent twins. Conditional on the images of the other vertices, its contribution to the homomorphism density changes from a number to ; Jensen inequality gives . Duplicating each original vertex therefore gives
A positive lower bound on the right supplies a positive proportion of all maps of the blow-up. Only maps fail to be injective, so for large at least one map is an embedding. Consequently a -free sequence has copies of . The clique removal lemma, proved in the next solution, then deletes edges to give a -free graph with .
Second, we prove the required stability for -free graphs by induction on . For such a graph is edgeless. In an -vertex -free graph , take a vertex of maximum vertex degree , put and , and note that is -free. The Turan theorem and the maximum-degree bound give
If , both nonnegative error terms are : and . The deficit in the bound for is likewise . Induction partitions into classes with a total of internal edges; adjoining gives an -class partition with the same property. Applying this to and restoring the removed edges gives such a partition of .
The number of possible crossing edges is . Since the actual crossing-edge count is within of this maximum, for every , and there are missing crossing edges. Choose so slowly that the number of vertices missing more than neighbours in other classes is . Delete those vertices and all internal edges. The remaining r-partite graph has vertices and every vertex has crossing vertex degree at least . The Turan theorem, or the size of a largest part, supplies the matching upper bound for its minimum vertex degree. Thus
This is a high-minimum-degree multipartite stability subgraph. The subgraph need not be spanning; deleting the exceptional vertices is essential. For , the spanning edgeless subgraph already proves the assertion.
Extremality forces the minimum degree. Choose . A proper -graph colouring embeds in , so every -free is also -free. By the Erdős-Stone theorem, its extremal edge count has the needed asymptotic size. The preceding proof supplies core classes of size in which every vertex misses only crossing neighbours, uniformly over the core.
Delete an arbitrary vertex from and introduce a new vertex adjacent precisely to with removed if necessary. The new graph is still -free. Indeed any new copy would use , all its neighbours in that copy would be in the specified core classes, and their set of common neighbours in has size . A vertex of this common neighbourhood outside the bounded vertex set of the copy replaces , producing an existing copy of in , a contradiction. For the new vertex is isolated and the same conclusion is immediate.
The replacement adds edges. Since has the maximum possible number of edges, . As was arbitrary and the minimum vertex degree is at most the average vertex degree,
This proves the minimum degree of an extremal forbidden-subgraph graph. The replacement argument avoids the invalid implication based solely on the asymptotic formula.
A colour-critical vertex also bounds the maximum degree. Suppose a vertex of has for some fixed . Since the core omits only vertices and all its classes have size , has at least neighbours in each . Otherwise, even counting every vertex in all other classes and outside the core would give too small a vertex degree.
Inside these neighbourhood sets, greedily choose a fixed number of vertices in each class. Every previously chosen vertex excludes only crossing nonneighbours, so each next candidate set still has positive linear size. This produces inside . A proper -graph colouring of embeds it in that complete multipartite graph; map to . All required incident edges exist, so this embeds , a contradiction. The case simply uses enough neighbours to embed the edgeless . Hence , and the average-degree lower bound completes the answer:
For disjoint nonempty vertex sets , write . The regular pair of vertex sets is -uniform when every , with and satisfies
This is also called an -regular pair.
Count transversal cliques by maintaining common neighbourhoods. For there are exactly copies, so the claim is immediate. For the hypotheses are vacuous if ; assume . Set
After choosing vertices in the first classes, let be their common neighbours in each later class. We maintain . In a regular pair, whenever , fewer than vertices of have fewer than neighbours in : otherwise those bad vertices, together with , contradict regularity. There are at most future classes, so their union excludes at most candidates from . At least choices remain, and each maintains the stated bound for all new common neighbourhoods.
Making these choices through all classes gives at least transversal cliques. Different selections give different vertex sets, since the classes are disjoint. Consequently
All constants depend only on , not on .
The Szemerédi regularity lemma states that for every and integer there exist such that every graph of order has a partition with , , equal-sized nonexceptional classes, and at most irregular unordered pairs of classes.
Apply the partition to prove clique removal. For , choose , , and a regularity parameter small enough for the preceding counting argument at density . The Szemerédi regularity lemma supplies . Delete all edges incident with , inside individual classes, between irregular pairs, and between regular pairs with density below . If the common class size is , the number deleted is at most
A surviving would have its vertices in distinct classes; every pair of these classes is regular and has density at least . The counting result would then give at least copies in the original graph. Since , choose, for example,
This would exceed , contradicting the assumed copy count. Thus fewer than cliques can be destroyed by removing at most edges, leaving no . This is the clique removal lemma.
For , take : a graph of order always has copies of , so the hypothesis is impossible. The assertion in that degenerate case is vacuous, rather than an edge-removal procedure capable of deleting vertices.