Longest odd cycles in non-bipartite $C_{2k+1}$-free graphs
Abstract
In strengthening a result of Andr\'asfai, Erd\H{o}s and S\'os in 1974, H\"{a}ggkvist proved that if is an -vertex -free graph with minimum degree and , then contains no odd cycle of length greater than . This result has many applications.In this paper, we consider a similar problem by replacing minimum degree condition with edge number condition. We prove that for integers with and , if is an -vertex -free graph with , then contains no odd cycle of length greater than . The construction shows that the result is best possible. This extends a result of Brandt [Discrete Applied Mathematics 79 (1997)], and a result of Bollob\'as and Thomason [Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B. 77 (1999)], and a result of Caccetta and Jia [Graphs Combin. 18 (2002)] and independently proving by Lin, Ning and Wu [Combin. Probab. Comput. 30 (2021)]. Recently, Ren, Wang, Yang, and the second author [SIAM J. Discrete Math. 38 (2024)] show that for and , every -vertex -free graph with can be made bipartite by deleting at most vertices or deleting at most edges. As an application, we derive this result and provide a simple proof.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2508.16199,
title = {Longest odd cycles in non-bipartite $C_{2k+1}$-free graphs},
author = {Rui Wang and Shipeng Wang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.16199},
year = {2025}
}