Think of a vertex of this hypergraph as an edge of the complete graph on . A hyperedge is the edge set of one -vertex clique. A fixed pair belongs to a clique precisely when its other vertices are chosen from the remaining , giving
For a set of graph edges, let be the number of their distinct endpoints. If , no -clique contains them and the codegree is zero. Otherwise its other vertices may be chosen freely, so
For , distinct edges have at least three endpoints, and all edges lie among the possible pairs. Thus and . In particular,
This also identifies why the relevant exponent is .
For fixed and , the ratio of the two binomial coefficients satisfies for all sufficiently large , with one constant valid for every . For ,
For any fixed , choose so large that the last bound is at most for every . Zero codegrees satisfy the bound automatically. The asserted small-codegree condition therefore holds uniformly. Its domain is the nonsingleton sets considered above: for a singleton, , so the assertion with arbitrary would be false.
A family of hypergraph containers is a collection of vertex subsets such that every hypergraph independent set of the hypergraph is contained in some . Here a hypergraph independent set is exactly the edge set of a -free graph on .
We use the following edge-sparse form of the hypergraph container theorem. For fixed uniformity and , there are constants such that an -uniform hypergraph on vertices with positive average hypergraph vertex degree , sufficiently small, and
has a family covering its hypergraph independent sets with
One obtains this form by iterating a degree-measure hypergraph container theorem, recording small container fingerprints at each step. To ensure the requested strict edge inequality, apply it with .
For our clique hypergraph, , and . The established codegree bound permits this choice of , and
Every container, viewed as an ordinary graph, has at most copies of .
We also use clique supersaturation: for each fixed , graphs with at least edges have at least copies of , for some and all sufficiently large . For clarity, this follows already from the Erdős-Stone theorem: choose a fixed sample size with . A uniformly sampled -set has expected value of the edge count above this bound by at least , forcing a positive proportion of samples to contain a clique. Counting each clique's extensions to -sets then gives the claimed bound.
Choose smaller than the corresponding supersaturation constant after converting to . Each container has fewer than ordinary edges. Every -free graph is a subgraph of one of these containers, so their number is at most
Conversely, every subgraph of a balanced Turan graph with parts is -free, giving at least possibilities. Letting be arbitrarily small proves the enumeration formula:
Let count the copies of the complete graph in the binomial random graph . By linearity of the expected value and independence of distinct edges,
Throughout, is sufficiently large that . We have , and .
First, since ,
The first moment method proves .
For the existence of a -clique, put and . Since ,
This alone is insufficient: we must control the variance via the overlap formula for the variance of a clique count. Let indicate that a given -set spans a clique. If , the two copies share edges, so
For their edge sets are disjoint and the covariance vanishes, even when they share one vertex. Counting ordered pairs of -sets gives the exact formula
This includes the diagonal case .
To bound the overlap factor, regard it as the probability that a uniformly chosen -set intersects a fixed in exactly vertices. A union bound over the possible specified -subsets of yields
Here is a falling factorial, and the last bound holds for . Therefore
For , the concave quadratic is minimized at an endpoint. Its endpoint values are and , both at least . Thus every power of in the last sum is at most , and
because the logarithm of its numerator is . The second moment method, or Chebyshev's inequality directly, gives . Finally, every larger clique contains a -clique, so the absence of excludes all larger sizes. The clique number is exactly with high probability:
A graph Ramsey number is the least such that every red-blue edge colouring of the complete graph has a red or a blue . At a vertex in , either at least neighbours have red incident edges or at least have blue incident edges. In the first case find a red and adjoin the vertex, or a blue ; the second case is symmetric. Thus
Starting with and , induction gives the binomial upper bound for a Ramsey number
For the lower construction, partition vertices into two classes of size , colour inside-class edges red and between-class edges blue. Red cliques have at most vertices, and the blue graph is bipartite, so has no odd cycle.
Conversely, a graph without an odd cycle is bipartite: in each connected component colour vertices by the parity of the length of a path from a root; differing path parities would give an odd closed walk, hence an odd cycle. On vertices one of the two blue bipartition classes has at least vertices. Every edge within it is red, giving a red . Thus is the exact threshold for this alternative.
Write . The Erdős-Stone theorem states that, for a fixed graph with chromatic number ,
Here is the extremal number, and copies are subgraphs, not necessarily induced subgraphs. We write for the balanced complete multipartite blow-up with classes of vertices each. All asymptotic errors below concern with the forbidden graphs fixed.
The stability subgraph. We prove the high-minimum-degree multipartite stability subgraph assertion directly from the Erdős-Stone theorem. For , the edgeless spanning subgraph suffices. Suppose .
First repeatedly remove a vertex whose degree of a vertex is less than times the current order, where sufficiently slowly. The Erdős-Stone theorem gives, uniformly for every -free subgraph of order at most ,
Indeed, apply the asymptotic bound at large orders; the contribution from bounded or sufficiently small orders is negligible relative to . If vertices survive, the removed edges number at most
Comparing with shows that , provided dominates , the initial relative error, and . Consequently . The surviving induced subgraph satisfies and .
By the Erdős-Stone theorem, contains for some as slowly as necessary. This follows because exceeds the extremal number density for each fixed by the positive gap . Choose so slowly that and , and denote its root classes by .
An outside vertex having at least neighbours of a vertex in every determines one choice of a -subset in each . At most outside vertices can determine any fixed choice, since otherwise these vertices and the chosen root sets form . Thus at most outside vertices have this property. Exclude those vertices and the root classes; put each remaining vertex in a class for which it has fewer than neighbours of a vertex in .
Write , with . Counting missing incidences with gives
Since , it follows that for every . The total missing incidences from all root vertices to assigned vertices are at most . At least of them are incidences with a vertex's own assigned root class. Hence only missing incidences go to other root classes.
Choose slowly and discard the assigned vertices with more than missing incidences to other root classes. Each remaining vertex of is adjacent to all but at most vertices of every , . If its class contained a complete bipartite graph , the vertices of this copy would have at least common neighbours of a vertex in each other root class. These sets extend the copy to , a contradiction. By the bipartite case of the Erdős-Stone theorem, the number of internal edges in each surviving class is .
The surviving graph still has edges, whereas the total possible cross-class edges, with these balanced classes, is . Thus only cross-class edges are missing. Discard the vertices missing more than cross-class edges, with slowly, and delete all internal edges. The resulting -partite subgraph has classes of size and
For the lower bound, every surviving vertex misses only vertices outside its class; the upper bound follows from the class sizes. This also records the uniform cross-class error that we need next.
Minimum degree in an extremal graph. Fix with . Choose large enough that embeds in . An extremal -free graph is therefore -free, and its edge count has the required asymptotics by the Erdős-Stone theorem. For take as above.
For any vertex , remove and introduce a new vertex whose vertex neighbourhood consists precisely of the vertices in other than . The new degree of a vertex is . This new graph remains -free. Indeed, a new copy of must use , and all its neighbours of a vertex in that copy lie in the other classes of . There are only boundedly many of them. Each misses only vertices in , so an unused vertex is adjacent to all of them. Replacing by would give in , which is impossible.
Extremality now forces , uniformly in . The upper bound for the minimum degree of a graph follows from . For , already gives . Thus
This is the minimum degree of an extremal forbidden-subgraph graph principle.
The exact extremal graph for disjoint cliques. Define
The plus sign denotes the join of graphs. The Turan graph contains no , so every such clique in uses a vertex of . Therefore contains no vertex-disjoint such cliques, and the extremal number is at least .
Induct on , with supplied by the Turan theorem, including its equality characterization. Let and let be extremal for . The preceding results give and the -partite subgraph . Keep its classes fixed and assign each of the remaining vertices to a class in which it has fewest neighbours of a vertex in . Write the resulting classes as ; all have size . Choose a positive so slowly that dominates the outside count, every cross-class error in , and every error in the minimum degree of a graph bound.
Suppose some vertex has at least internal neighbours of a vertex. If , the assignment rule shows that has at least neighbours of a vertex in every . If , it has this many in and in the other . If contained disjoint , we could choose one vertex in each , successively avoiding those copies and the missing cross-neighbours of the already chosen vertices. This produces a further through . For , this just chooses an unused neighbour of . Hence is -free, and induction gives
Since the candidate attains , equality holds throughout: is a universal vertex and is the inductively unique extremal graph. Thus is isomorphic to .
It remains to show that this case must occur. Otherwise all internal vertex degrees are less than . Together with the lower bound on and , this implies that every vertex misses only vertices outside its own class. If some contains a matching in a graph of edges, extend its edges one by one to , choosing one vertex from each other class. At every step only cross-neighbours and boundedly many used vertices are excluded. This gives disjoint forbidden cliques, a contradiction.
A maximal matching in each class therefore has at most edges, and its at most endpoints form a vertex cover of the internal edges. Their internal vertex degrees are all , so the total internal edge count is . The cross-class edge count is at most , whence
But the balanced part sizes of the Turan graph give
contradicting extremality for . This argument also works for . Consequently, for all sufficiently large ,
The uniqueness is up to isomorphic graphs, as usual for an extremal graph for disjoint cliques.
Let be a clique and choose the given prime with . For distinct , the intersection size is a multiple of strictly below . In , set
These are distinct residues because , every off-diagonal intersection size lies in , and the diagonal size does not. Part i, now over , yields
The subsets of a -element set having size at most inject into its ordered -tuples: list a nonempty subset increasingly and repeat its final element, while assigning the empty set one decreasing tuple not used in this way. The injection is not surjective, so
Put . Parts ii and iii give a graph with neither a clique nor an independent set of size . Its number of vertices satisfies the standard binomial lower bound
Consequently the modular-intersection graph Ramsey lower bound gives
For every fixed ,
The first quantity exceeds the second when . Thus is eventually larger than for every fixed , so this lower bound grows faster than every polynomial in .
For fixed and positive density threshold , sufficiently regular pairwise dense bipartite graphs between disjoint equal-sized vertex classes contain at least transversal cliques, for some . A greedy embedding maintains common neighbourhoods and discards the small set of vertices with atypical degrees into them. The constants depend only on .
Square of a cycle 2026-10-07
In a cycle square, each triple of consecutive vertices is a clique. A proper three-colouring therefore repeats with period three and closes exactly when the length is divisible by three. For all other cycle lengths at least four colours are needed; the five-cycle square is a complete five-vertex graph.