English

On the number of edges of restricted matchstick graphs

Combinatorics 2025-06-03 v1

Abstract

A graph whose vertices are points in the plane and whose edges are noncrossing straight-line segments of unit length is called a \emph{matchstick graph}. We prove two somewhat counterintuitive results concerning the maximum number of edges of such graphs in two different scenarios. First, we show that there is a constant c>0c>0 such that every triangle-free matchstick graph on nn vertices has at most 2ncn2n-c\sqrt{n} edges. This statement is not true for any c>2.c>\sqrt2. We also prove that for every r>0r>0, there is a constant ε(r)>0\varepsilon(r)>0 with the property that every matchstick graph on nn vertices contained in a disk of radius rr has at most (2ε(r))n(2-\varepsilon(r))n edges.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2506.01589,
  title  = {On the number of edges of restricted matchstick graphs},
  author = {Panna Gehér and János Pach and Konrad Swanepoel and Géza Tóth},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.01589},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

10 pages, 3 figures