Bipartite stability from few odd cycles 2026-10-07
Fix an odd cycle length. If the graph has edge density at least and sufficiently few copies of that cycle, odd-cycle copies from positive triangle density forces few triangles in a graph. The triangle removal lemma deletes at most edges, after which the clique-free edit bound applies with two parts. Absorbing its linear rounding error into the density margin gives the displayed bound for large order.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2013 iii Paper 12 3 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-07
We prove edit-distance stability for clique-free graphs by induction on , using the symmetric difference of edge sets as the distance. For , a -free graph is edgeless, and there is nothing to change. For , choose a vertex of maximum degree , let be its neighbourhood and put . Then is -free. WriteBoth deficits are nonnegative by the Turan theorem. Since every vertex of has degree at most ,The complete -partite graph formed from an -partite Turan graph on and the new class has at most edges. Thus , and direct subtraction givesBy induction, edit into a complete -partite graph using at most changes. Delete the edges inside , and add the missing edges between and . The resulting graph is complete -partite on the same vertex set, andwhere the inequality uses . The required edit distance is at most . Empty partition classes are allowed; a sufficiently dense nondegenerate case has the usual full complement of classes.
For the odd-cycle conclusion, use two standard consequences of the Szemerédi regularity lemma, stated explicitly. The triangle removal lemma says that for every , some ensures that a graph with at most triangles in a graph can be made triangle-free by deleting at most edges, for all sufficiently large . Also, for each fixed odd length and each , there is such that a graph with at least triangles in a graph contains at least copies of .
For clarity, the latter odd-cycle copies from positive triangle density consequence follows by applying regularity with error small relative to , removing exceptional, irregular and very sparse pairs, and retaining a triangle in a graph among the remaining regular dense pairs. The graph embedding lemma for regular pairs counts a positive constant times embeddings of any fixed graph properly three-coloured into those three clusters, including . Dividing by the fixed number of descriptions of a cycle gives the same conclusion for unlabelled copies.
Apply triangle in a graph removal with , and take the resulting . A -free graph cannot have triangles in a graph for large , by the preceding consequence. Delete at most edges to obtain a triangle-free . With ,Apply the proved stability result with . The resulting complete bipartite graph satisfiesChoose also large enough that . Then the distance is at most .
For the unheaded continuation, use the same and its associated , and set . Having at most cycles rules out triangles in a graph just as before. The identical deletion and stability calculation applies. A sufficiently small gives the same bound.