English

A rainbow version of Mantel's Theorem

Combinatorics 2020-02-27 v2

Abstract

Mantel's Theorem asserts that a simple nn vertex graph with more than 14n2\frac{1}{4}n^2 edges has a triangle (three mutually adjacent vertices). Here we consider a rainbow variant of this problem. We prove that whenever G1,G2,G3G_1, G_2, G_3 are simple graphs on a common set of nn vertices and E(Gi)>(262781)n20.2557n2|E(G_i)| > ( \frac{ 26 - 2 \sqrt{7} }{81})n^2 \approx 0.2557 n^2 for 1i31 \le i \le 3, then there exist distinct vertices v1,v2,v3v_1,v_2,v_3 so that (working with the indices modulo 3) we have vivi+1E(Gi)v_i v_{i+1} \in E(G_i) for 1i31 \le i \le 3. We provide an example to show this bound is best possible. This also answers a question of Diwan and Mubayi. We include a new short proof of Mantel's Theorem we obtained as a byproduct.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1812.11872,
  title  = {A rainbow version of Mantel's Theorem},
  author = {Ron Aharoni and Matt DeVos and Sebastián González Hermosillo de la Maza and Amanda Montejano and Robert Šámal},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1812.11872},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

12 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T06:59:57.814Z