English

Bipartite Extremal Numbers of Trees

Combinatorics 2026-07-31 v1

Abstract

We study a restriction of the classical Erd\H{o}s--S\'os problem, the extremal number of trees, to the class of bipartite host graphs, both when only the order of the host is prescribed and when its two part-sizes are fixed. We give natural lower-bound constructions and formulate corresponding linear upper-bound conjectures. We apply a weighted variant of kk-minimality to prove upper bounds for a broad family of trees including brooms, trees with part-sizes differing by at most one, and all trees on at most 7 vertices, resolving part of a problem of Caro, Patk\'os and Tuza up to additive constants. We also relate the fixed-part extremal number of a tree to the ordinary extremal number, and consider an oriented bipartite extremal function analogous to the Zarankiewicz function.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.29579,
  title  = {Bipartite Extremal Numbers of Trees},
  author = {Lucas Waite and Nuh Aydin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.29579},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

13 pages, no figures