Balancing a multipartite edge-triangle objective Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-14
With two part sizes of fixed sum and all other sizes fixed, this objective has form constant plus , where is the sum of the other sizes. A nonpositive coefficient permits merging the pair, while a positive coefficient favours balancing it. Choose an optimum with fewest nonzero parts: all remaining coefficients are positive, and the integer sizes differ by at most one. For real sizes they are exactly equal. This explains extremizers among Turán graphs.
Chromatic polynomial determines a Turán graph Created 2026-10-14 Updated 2026-10-25
If a simple graph has the same chromatic polynomial as the Turán graph , it has the same number of vertices and edges, and the same chromatic number . It is therefore -free and attains equality in Turán's theorem. The equality case forces it to be isomorphic to .
Enumeration of subgraph-closed graph properties Created 2026-10-07 Updated 2026-10-14
Here is the least chromatic number of an excluded graph, for a proper unbounded subgraph-closed property. All subgraphs of a balanced Turán graph give the lower bound. For the upper bound, a regularity reduced graph is clique-free, so its dense pairs have the Turan theorem edge bound; sparse pairs contribute only small binary entropy and the bounded partition description costs only a linear number of bits.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 iii Paper 11 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Write for a balanced complete multipartite blow-up, with parts each containing vertices. Its occurrence is a subgraph condition, so additional internal edges in the host are harmless. The coefficient multiplying is essential: the PDF has , although it is lost in the converted TeX.
First prove the common neighbourhood from bipartite density estimate. Suppose a bipartite graph has parts of sizes and at least edges. For an integer , count incidences between -subsets of the first part and their common neighbours in the second. The discrete convexity of , with value zero for , givesThe convexity assertion follows directly from , which is increasing in ; smoothing two unequal degrees cannot increase the sum. In the binomial ratio every factor is at least , because . Consequently some satisfies
We prove the logarithmic clique blow-up from minimum degree by induction on . When , the degree hypothesis is impossible for a loopless graph, so any positive works vacuously. Assume . For , take two copies of the vertex set and join the copies of adjacent vertices. This bipartite graph has edge density of a bipartite graph at least . ChooseFor sufficiently large , , and the estimate supplies at least common neighbours. Choose of them. The two selected sets are disjoint in the original graph, since a selected vertex cannot be adjacent to itself. They give .
For , put . The same minimum degree of a graph exceeds . By induction there is a with , where . Pair the vertices of its parts into disjoint transversal cliques . Each has at leastcommon neighbours, by bounding the union of the non-neighbour sets of its vertices. Set . Form the bipartite graph whose first part is these cliques, with joined to a vertex when that vertex is a common neighbour of all of . It has density at least . ChooseFor large , and . The estimate gives selected cliques and at least common vertices. The selected cliques supply vertices in each of the original parts, and their common vertices supply the final part. No common vertex belongs to a selected clique, again because there are no loops. All required cross-part edges are present. Increasing to satisfy these finitely many inequalities completes the induction:
The Erdős-Stone theorem states that for a fixed graph with chromatic number ,The lower bound comes from the Turán graph , which cannot contain an -chromatic subgraph. To obtain the upper bound from our minimum-degree result, suppose , where and . Repeatedly delete a vertex of degree less than times the current order, where , until no such vertex remains. If the remaining order is , thenThus for large , with , and the remaining subgraph has minimum degree of a graph at least . It contains . A proper graph colouring of places its vertices in the parts once their size exceeds . This contradicts -freeness. Adjusting a fixed positive density margin absorbs the difference between and , proving the upper bound.
The six-vertex forbidden graph is the octahedral graph : the deleted matching in a graph gives its three independent pairs. Its chromatic number is three, soThe printed notation uses for the extremal-number argument while its defining condition forbids ; the answer uses that explicitly defined forbidden graph. For the strict finite inequality, take and add one edge inside its larger part, which has at least two vertices for . Every triangle in a graph then uses this added edge. However, contains two vertex-disjoint triangles in a graph, obtained by taking one vertex from each pair and then the other three. It therefore cannot occur in the constructed graph. Hence
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 ii Paper 3 17F Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
The chromatic polynomial counts proper vertex colorings with labeled colors at positive integer . For an edge , the deletion-contraction recurrence for the chromatic polynomial is , where parallel edges in the contracted graph are merged. Induction on edges, starting from the edgeless polynomial , shows that the coefficients have alternating signs: the contracted graph has one fewer vertex, so subtracting its alternating polynomial reinforces the same signs. The leading coefficient stays one. The coefficient of decreases by one per added edge, hence it is . Thus , with , and all .
For a tree, choose a root, give it any of colors, and give every other vertex any of the colors different from its parent. This gives . Conversely, a graph with this polynomial has . The chromatic polynomial of a disjoint union is the product of those of its connected components, each divisible by . The given polynomial has a simple zero at zero, forcing a single connected component. A connected graph with edges is a tree. The converse holds.
Finally the polynomial determines the number of vertices, the number of edges and the chromatic number. If it equals that of the Turán graph , with , then has chromatic number , so has no , and has the maximum possible number of edges for such a graph. The equality case in Turán's theorem makes isomorphic to . This is the chromatic polynomial determines a Turán graph property. If , the graph is simply complete and its edge count already determines it.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2009 ii Paper 2 17F i Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
The Turán graph is the complete -partite graph with part sizes differing by at most one. Turan theorem states that a graph on vertices containing no has at most edges, with equality precisely for that balanced complete multipartite graph.
Here is a symmetrization proof, including equality. Choose a -free graph with the maximum number of edges. Replacing a vertex by a nonadjacent twin of a nonadjacent vertex preserves -freeness: a clique using the replacement would give the same clique using . Thus nonadjacent vertices must have equal degrees, or cloning the higher-degree vertex increases the edge count. In fact their neighborhoods are identical. Otherwise choose adjacent to but not . Cloning to preserves the total number of edges but lowers 's degree by one, leaving 's degree unchanged. The still nonadjacent pair now has unequal degrees, allowing an edge-increasing clone and contradicting maximality.
Nonadjacency is consequently an equivalence relation, and the extremal graph is complete multipartite. It has at most parts because choosing one vertex from each part forms a clique. For , using fewer parts cannot be extremal if a part can be split. Finally its number of edges is , maximized uniquely by balanced sizes: moving a vertex from a part at least two larger than another decreases the sum of squares. This proves the theorem and its equality characterization. The cases with fewer vertices than the forbidden clique are immediate.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2011 ii Paper 3 17F Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
The Turán graph is the complete -partite graph whose vertex-class sizes differ by at most one; empty classes are allowed when . Its edge count is . Turan theorem states that every -vertex graph containing no has at most edges.
Here is a symmetrization proof, including the equality case. Let be any -free graph maximizing the edge count. If nonadjacent have unequal degrees, replace the lower-degree vertex by a twin of the higher-degree vertex: this increases edges and cannot create a forbidden clique, since any new clique containing the twin corresponds to an old clique containing its model. Thus all nonadjacent pairs have equal degrees.
If such had distinct neighbourhoods, choose (their equal degrees ensure such a vertex exists), and clone onto . The new graph has the same maximum number of edges and is still clique-free. Originally and were nonadjacent, so . After cloning, loses precisely its edge to , while keeps its degree. They remain nonadjacent but now have different degrees, contradicting the preceding necessary property of every extremal graph. Hence nonadjacent vertices have identical neighbourhoods.
Nonadjacency together with equality is therefore an equivalence relation, making complete multipartite. It has at most classes, otherwise choosing one vertex from each of classes gives a clique. For fixed total size, is minimized by classes balanced as equally as possible: splitting a nontrivial class when fewer than classes are used adds edges, and moving a vertex from a class of size at least two greater than another also adds edges. Thus every extremal graph is , up to isomorphism. This proves both the bound and its equality characterization. In particularFor the bipartite assertion, take a maximum matching in a graph of edges. No edge joins two unmatched vertices. Let be its endpoints. For each matched pair , both and cannot have neighbours outside : those two neighbours lie in opposite vertex classes and would replace by two disjoint edges, increasing the matching. Thus at most edges from this pair lead outside , giving . There are at most edges within . ConsequentlyIf , necessarily .
Finally let be the three classes of the triangle-free graph. If , the desired bound is immediate. Otherwise set . The preceding result gives disjoint edges. For each edge , the -neighbourhoods of its endpoints are disjoint, or there would be a triangle, so . The other vertices of each have at most neighbours in . HenceSince ,Equality is attained by retaining every and edge and no edges.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2013 iii Paper 12 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Write for the balanced graph blow-up of a complete graph, with classes of size ; containment here is as a subgraph, not necessarily an induced subgraph. The logarithmic form of the Erdős-Stone theorem is: for fixed and , there are and such thatThus the guaranteed balanced part size is at least , with independent of . We prove the logarithmic Erdős-Stone theorem by a density-to-cliques step and a constructive dense clique family blow-up lemma.
First choose a fixed large enough that , where is the edge count of the Turán graph. A uniformly chosen -vertex subset has expected edge count at least . If its induced graph contains no , the Turan theorem bounds that count by . Since the count is always at most , the probability that the subset contains an -clique is at least . Double counting the incidences between such subsets and their cliques gives, for ,for a fixed and all sufficiently large . Here . This is clique supersaturation by sampling.
We now prove the needed dense clique family blow-up lemma, with the following stronger induction invariant. Given any family of at least distinct -cliques, there is a complete -partite subgraph with each class of size , containing that many pairwise vertex-disjoint transversal members of , each with one vertex in every class. Extra edges within its classes can be ignored. We may suppose . For , any singletons suffice, and we may take once is large.
For , put . Repeatedly delete every member of the current family containing an -clique whose number of extensions is at most . Each such face is processed at most once, and there are at most possible faces. At most members are deleted. The remaining family has size at least , and every face that remains has more than extensions. Its family of -faces has size at least , since each face is in at most members.
Apply the induction hypothesis to these faces. It gives a complete -partite subgraph with vertices in each class and a matching of transversal -faces from the family. Form a bipartite graph whose left vertices are the and whose right vertices are the original vertices; join to when . Every left degree exceeds .
The following common neighbourhood from bipartite density estimate is elementary. In a bipartite graph with class sizes and at least edges, averaging over left subsets of size and using convexity of the integer sequence giveswhenever . The last inequality follows by comparing the factors in the two binomial coefficients; the integer convexity follows from the nondecreasing first differences .
ChooseFor large , , so . The estimate supplies selected faces with a common extension set of size at least . This extension set is disjoint from the selected faces: a vertex in any one of them cannot extend that face. Their union has vertices in each of the old classes, with all required cross edges; choose distinct common extension vertices as a new class. Attaching one different extension vertex to each selected face also gives disjoint members of . This completes the induction, with positive constants independent of . Apply it to the clique family above and take .
The logarithmic order cannot be increased in a uniform forcing result. Put , choose strictly between and one, and take a binomial random graph. Its edge density exceeds with probability tending to one, by the variance estimate for a sum of independent edge indicators. With , the expected number of ordered embeddings of is at mostFor and , the logarithm of this bound is negative of order . Markov's inequality therefore makes the probability of any such copy tend to zero. Both events hold simultaneously for some graphs of every sufficiently large order. There are graphs meeting the density hypothesis whose largest balanced blow-up has part size . This upper bound concerns what density can force; it is not an upper bound for every dense graph, since a complete graph has much larger blow-ups.
Finally, is the square of a cycle, for . Any three consecutive vertices form a triangle in a graph. In a proper three-colouring, once the first three colours are fixed, each subsequent vertex must repeat the colour three positions earlier. Closing the cycle is possible precisely when . Conversely, repeating the three colours gives such a colouring whenever . In that case embeds in , and the density exceeds the bipartite Turan theorem threshold by a fixed amount, so the theorem forces eventually. If , the balanced Turán graphs have density at least and contain no graph of chromatic number greater than three. They give a counterexample sequence. Exactly the cycle lengths divisible by three have the required property.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2013 iii Paper 12 3 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
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 Turán 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.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2013 iii Paper 12 4 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
In this enumeration problem, monotone means subgraph-closed graph property: both deleting vertices and deleting edges preserve membership. This is a decreasing convention, rather than the increasing-edge convention often used for random-graph thresholds. Assume first that the property is proper and has graphs of arbitrarily large orders. These are the usual nondegenerate hypotheses for the formula.
Put . Every graph of chromatic number at most belongs to . In particular, all subgraphs of a fixed balanced Turán graph belong. Choosing each of its edges independently as present or absent givesFor the upper bound, fix with . Every member of is -free, by closure under subgraphs.
We use the following standard regularity consequences. For every sufficiently small regularity error , large minimum cluster count , and fixed positive density cutoff , the Szemerédi regularity lemma gives an equitable partition into clusters and an exceptional set of at most vertices, with at most irregular pairs. The graph embedding lemma for regular pairs says that a fixed graph with a prescribed proper colouring embeds into the corresponding clusters if all its required cross pairs are regular with density at least , provided is sufficiently small relative to and the graph. Hence the reduced graph of a regularity partition, joining regular pairs of density at least , is -free: such a clique would embed .
By the Turan theorem, this reduced graph has at most edges. On its dense pairs allow arbitrary choices of original edges, giving at most free binary choices. All edges within clusters, touching the exceptional set, or lying in irregular pairs contribute further choices. On each remaining pair there are at most times its number of possible edges. The elementary binary entropy estimatebounds the total sparse-pair contribution by . The partition and pair classifications have at most descriptions, whose logarithm is since is fixed. Choose large, then small, then sufficiently small; their total error can be made arbitrarily small. This provesIt is the enumeration of subgraph-closed graph properties.
For the hereditary extension, a hereditary graph property is closed under induced subgraphs. Define the clique-independent partition class , for , to consist of graphs partitionable into possibly empty classes, exactly designated as cliques and the other designated as independent sets; cross edges are unrestricted. Thus is the total number of classes. The colouring number of a hereditary graph property isUse value zero if this set is empty, and infinity for the class of all graphs.
for . The lower bound follows from the definition. For the upper bound, fix any and a balanced partition of a large -vertex set into classes with clique classes. Independent choices of cross edges give distinct graphs in . On the other hand, all graphs in can be described by at most partitions, each with at most unrestricted cross pairs. The former count is strictly larger for large , so is not contained in for any . A contained class with even more parts would contain one of these -part classes by making unused parts empty, so it is also impossible.
The main changes for the hereditary graph enumeration theorem are as follows. The lower bound now uses a contained class : within-class edges are fixed as complete or empty, and the balanced cross pairs still give free edge choices. For the upper bound, since no is wholly contained in , choose one forbidden induced graph for each .
Use the standard induced regularity template lemma: for a fixed finite forbidden induced family and any error tolerance, a regularity refinement gives bounded-size templates with internal clique/independent types and cross pairs classified as sparse, almost complete, or intermediate. A clique of intermediate pairs on classes realizes every fixed induced pattern consistent with the internal types of those classes. This induced embedding conclusion uses a Ramsey refinement within clusters and regularity for both edges and nonedges; the total exceptional-pair cost can be made arbitrarily small. Applied to the , a clique on intermediate classes would realize the forbidden whose number of clique types is . Thus the graph of intermediate pairs is -free. Only intermediate pairs contribute unrestricted binary choices; sparse pairs and the missing edges in almost-complete pairs each have the same entropy bound as before. The Turan theorem and the earlier counting argument now giveThis formula assumes . For the universal property the count is exactly ; a hereditary property of bounded order has and has no graphs on sufficiently large vertex sets, so the displayed expression with is not applicable.
For a proper subgraph-closed graph property, any contained must have : if , it contains arbitrarily large complete graphs, and closure under subgraphs would force every graph into the property. Consequently its colouring number is exactly one less than the least chromatic number of an excluded graph. The excluded family of an intersection is the union of the two excluded families, whose minimum chromatic number is the smaller of their minima. Therefore for subgraph-closed properties, with the universal case treated by .
For hereditary properties take and , both of colouring number two. A graph in their intersection is both bipartite and a union of two cliques. A clique in a bipartite graph has at most two vertices; hence every such graph has at most four vertices. The intersection contains no complete clique-independent class on arbitrarily large orders, so . This also demonstrates why the bounded-order exception to the enumeration formula is necessary.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 iii Paper 110 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The Erdős-Stone theorem says that, for a fixed graph with chromatic number ,The lower bound comes from the balanced Turán 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 givesA 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 giveIf , 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. ThusThis 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:
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 iii Paper 110 3 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
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 , givingFor 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, soFor , 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, andhas a family covering its hypergraph independent sets withOne 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 , andEvery 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 mostConversely, every subgraph of a balanced Turán graph with parts is -free, giving at least possibilities. Letting be arbitrarily small proves the enumeration formula:
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 110 1 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
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 mostComparing 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 givesSince , 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 andFor 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 . ThusThis is the minimum degree of an extremal forbidden-subgraph graph principle.
The exact extremal graph for disjoint cliques. DefineThe plus sign denotes the join of graphs. The Turán 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 givesSince 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 , whenceBut the balanced part sizes of the Turán graph givecontradicting 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.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 110 2 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Symmetrization for an arbitrary real coefficient. Among graphs maximizing , choose one maximizingFor a vertex , put . This is the contribution of edges and triangles in a graph containing . If are nonadjacent, Zykov symmetrization replacing by a clone of changes by ; the opposite replacement changes it by . Maximality implies , so both changes preserve .
Let and . In the first replacement the vertex degrees in increase by one and those in decrease by one; in the opposite replacement these changes reverse. The changes to cancel when the two replacements are added. Since ,If the two vertex neighbourhoods differ, one replacement increases , a contradiction. Thus every pair of nonadjacent vertices has the same vertex neighbourhood. Nonadjacency, with equality allowed, is an equivalence relation: if and are nonadjacent and and are nonadjacent, their identical vertex neighbourhoods forbid as well. Its classes are independent sets and every cross-class edge is present. ThereforeThis edge-triangle symmetrization works for either sign of .
The exact supporting line. For , writeWe prove the triangle support line between bipartite and tripartite Turan graphs by maximizing . First . For , its values are respectively . For , the exact balancing of the Turán graph gives , while and the arithmetic-geometric mean inequality gives . Hence
By edge-triangle symmetrization a maximizing graph can be taken complete multipartite graph; among such maximizers use one with the fewest nonempty parts. If there are at least four parts, let be the two smallest sizes. Then . Merging them loses edges and triangles in a graph, so the objective changes byThis contradicts the choice of the number of parts. Thus at most three parts remain.
For three part sizes , the objective isIf , merging the parts of sizes does not decrease it, again contradicting minimality. If and , transferring one vertex from the largest to the smallest part raises by and strictly increases the objective. Thus a three-part maximizer has all sizes differing by at most one, and is . A maximizer with at most two parts has objective at most , since it has no triangles in a graph and the Mantel theorem bounds its edges. Finally,Therefore every graph satisfies . At the prescribed edge count this givesFor , the conclusion is simply the nonnegative lower bound zero. All rounding in the Turán graphs has been retained.
One edge above the bipartite threshold. Write . We prove the Triangle lower bound one edge above the Mantel threshold by induction on , allowing at least edges. For , five edges on four vertices give two triangles in a graph, and adding edges preserves this bound.
We will also use the following consequence of an inductive bound: on vertices, at least edges, for an integer , force at least triangles in a graph. Delete surplus edges first to leave exactly . Repeatedly delete an edge in a triangle in a graph until edges remain. The Mantel theorem guarantees such a triangle in a graph at every step; each deletion destroys at least one distinct triangle in a graph. Apply the inductive bound to the remaining graph.
Now take exactly edges. If every edge lies in a triangle in a graph, the edge-triangle incidence bound gives . This is at least for ; the base case was handled separately.
Otherwise choose an edge in no triangle in a graph. Its endpoints have disjoint vertex neighbourhoods, so . Deleting removes exactly edges and leaves at least edges. If , it leaves at least edges, and the strengthened inductive bound gives at least triangles in a graph already.
If , induction gives at least triangles in a graph after deletion. There must be an additional triangle in a graph containing or . Otherwise both and are independent sets; since they are disjoint and cover all vertices, would be bipartite graph, contradicting by the Mantel theorem. HenceThe bound is sharp: add one internal edge to one class of the complete bipartite graph . Its triangles in a graph are precisely that edge together with each of the vertices in the other class.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2020 ii Paper 3 17G i Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-14
Turan theorem states that among all -vertex graphs containing no , the maximum number of edges is attained by the Turán 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.
Triangle support line between bipartite and tripartite Turan graphs Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-14
For , put , , and . Every graph on vertices satisfiesThus an edge count forces at least triangles in a graph. This is an exact finite bound, with the rounding in the Turán graph retained. To prove it, use edge-triangle symmetrization. The inequality allows merging the two smallest classes when there are at least four classes. With three classes, fixing the middle class makes the objective affine in the product of the other two sizes; either merge them or balance them. Only and need remain.
Turán graph Created 2026-09-29 Updated 2026-10-14
The Turán graph is a complete multipartite graph with independent sets of sizes differing by at most one, with every cross edge present. Empty parts are allowed when .[ref]
Graph Theory by Reinhard Diestel. third electronic edition (2005), §7.1, printed p. 165, definition of Turán graphs and convention for empty partition sets
In this example, the independent sets are , and . Count the edges between each pair of parts:Any four vertices put at least two in the same independent set, by the pigeonhole principle, so they cannot form . Conversely, every choice of one vertex from each part is a triangle in a graph, giving triangles in a graph. Clique exclusion here does not mean triangle-free.
For the exact count, Euclidean division writes , where uses the floor function and is the remainder, with . There are parts of size and of size . For any part sizes summing to , count cross edges by expanding the square:ThereforeFor , we have , giving . The Quadratic Turan edge bound gives instead: the exact correction subtracts .
Balancing is an integer optimization with a simple reason. If two part sizes satisfy , moving one vertex from the larger part to the smaller decreases their contribution to the sum of squares byso it increases the edge count by . For eight vertices, parts give edges; moving one vertex produces and edges. The most symmetric permitted sizes pack the most cross edges, which explains the sharp construction in Turán's theorem.
Turán's theorem Created 2026-10-14 Updated 2026-10-14
How many edges can we retain while excluding a prescribed clique? For integers and , every simple graph on vertices containing no complete subgraph satisfiesEquality holds exactly for the Turán graph , up to graph isomorphism. Thus the extremal number is .[ref]
For example, has independent sets of sizes and edges, as counted in Turán graph. It contains triangles in a graph, but no four-vertex clique. Consequently any simple graph on eight vertices with edges contains , while edges alone do not force one. Excluding larger cliques permits denser graphs; Mantel theorem is precisely the first nontrivial case.
A short proof outline uses Zykov symmetrization. If an extremizer is not a complete multipartite graph, it has vertices with absent and present. If either or has larger vertex degree than , clone that vertex in place of . Otherwise replace both by nonadjacent clones of , gaining edges. Both contradict extremality; balancing the resulting at most parts gives .[ref]
The vertex cloning in a graph step preserves clique exclusion because any clique using a clone can substitute its original vertex; nonadjacent clones cannot occur together in a clique. At most parts can be nonempty, since selecting one vertex from each gives a clique. If fewer than parts are nonempty and one has at least two vertices, splitting it creates more edges, so it cannot be extremal. For the bound is zero. For , the Turán graph is , and the bound is the total possible edges.
