English

Extremal $H$-free planar graphs

Combinatorics 2018-08-07 v1

Abstract

Given a graph HH, a graph is HH-free if it does not contain HH as a subgraph. We continue to study the topic of "extremal" planar graphs, that is, how many edges can an HH-free planar graph on nn vertices have? We define exP(n,H)ex_{_\mathcal{P}}(n,H) to be the maximum number of edges in an HH-free planar graph on nn vertices. We first obtain several sufficient conditions on HH which yield exP(n,H)=3n6ex_{_\mathcal{P}}(n,H)=3n-6 for all nV(H)n\ge |V(H)|. We discover that the chromatic number of HH does not play a role, as in the celebrated Erd\H{o}s-Stone Theorem. We then completely determine exP(n,H)ex_{_\mathcal{P}}(n,H) when HH is a wheel or a star. Finally, we examine the case when HH is a (t,r)(t, r)-fan, that is, HH is isomorphic to K1+tKr1K_1+tK_{r-1}, where t2t\ge2 and r3r\ge 3 are integers. However, determining exP(n,H)ex_{_\mathcal{P}}(n,H), when HH is a planar subcubic graph, remains wide open.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1808.01487,
  title  = {Extremal $H$-free planar graphs},
  author = {Yongxin Lan and Yongtang Shi and Zi-Xia Song},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.01487},
  year   = {2018}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T03:24:29.846Z