English

An improved double-exponential lower bound for $r_4(5,n)$

Combinatorics 2026-05-12 v2

Abstract

The Ramsey number rk(s,n)r_k(s,n) is the smallest integer NN such that every NN-vertex kk-graph contains either a copy of Ks(k)K_s^{(k)} or an independent set of size nn. A well-known conjecture of Erd\H{o}s and Hajnal states that for any fixed 4k<s4\le k<s, rk(s,n)twrk1(Ω(n)).r_k(s,n)\ge \operatorname{twr}_{k-1}(\Omega(n)). At present, only the last two cases of this conjecture remain open, namely r4(5,n)22Ω(n)r_4(5,n)\ge2^{2^{\Omega(n)}} and r4(6,n)22Ω(n)r_4(6,n)\ge2^{2^{\Omega(n)}}. Recently, Du, Hu, Liu, and Wang achieved a breakthrough by proving r4(5,n)22Ω(n1/7)r_4(5,n)\ge 2^{2^{\Omega(n^{1/7})}}, which is the first double-exponential lower bound for r4(5,n)r_4(5,n). In this note, we improve this to 22Ω(n1/5)2^{2^{\Omega(n^{1/5})}} by modifying their construction and reducing the greedy selection of local maxima from seven layers to five, thereby making further progress towards the Erd\H{o}s-Hajnal conjecture.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.04105,
  title  = {An improved double-exponential lower bound for $r_4(5,n)$},
  author = {Chunchao Fan and Mingze Li and Qizhong Lin and Bo Ning},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.04105},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

9 pages

R2 v1 2026-07-01T12:51:30.326Z