English

Edges not covered by monochromatic bipartite graphs

Combinatorics 2022-10-27 v2

Abstract

Let fk(n,H)f_k(n,H) denote the maximum number of edges not contained in any monochromatic copy of~HH in a kk-coloring of the edges of KnK_n, and let ex(n,H)ex(n,H) denote the Tur\'an number of HH. In place of f2(n,H)f_2(n,H) we simply write f(n,H)f(n,H). Keevash and Sudakov proved that f(n,H)=ex(n,H)f(n,H)=ex(n,H) if HH is an edge-critical graph or C4C_4 and asked if this equality holds for any graph HH. All known exact values of this question require HH to contain at least one cycle. In this paper we focus on acyclic graphs and have the following results: (1) We prove f(n,H)=ex(n,H)f(n,H)=ex(n,H) when HH is a spider or a double broom. (2) A \emph{tail} in HH is a path P3=v0v1v2P_3=v_0v_1v_2 such that v2v_2 is only adjacent to v1v_1 and v1v_1 is only adjacent to v0,v2v_0,v_2 in HH. We obtain a tight upper bound for f(n,H)f(n,H) when HH is a bipartite graph with a tail. This result provides the first bipartite graphs which answer the question of Keevash and Sudakov in the negative. (3) Liu, Pikhurko and Sharifzadeh asked if fk(n,T)=(k1)ex(n,T)f_k(n,T)=(k-1)ex(n,T) when TT is a tree. We provide an upper bound for f2k(n,P2k)f_{2k}(n,P_{2k}) and show it is tight when 2k12k-1 is prime. This provides a negative answer to their question.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2210.11037,
  title  = {Edges not covered by monochromatic bipartite graphs},
  author = {Xiutao Zhu and Ervin Győri and Zhen He and Zequn Lv and Nika Salia and Casey Tompkins and Kitti Varga},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2210.11037},
  year   = {2022}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T04:03:35.262Z