English

$P_{n}$-induced-saturated graphs exist for all $n \geq 6$

Combinatorics 2021-03-02 v2

Abstract

Let PnP_{n} be a path graph on nn vertices. We say that a graph GG is PnP_{n}-induced-saturated if GG contains no induced copy of PnP_{n}, but deleting any edge of GG as well as adding to GG any edge of GcG^{c} creates such a copy. Martin and Smith (2012) showed that there is no P4P_{4}-induced-saturated graph. On the other hand, there trivially exist PnP_{n}-induced-saturated graphs for n=2,3n=2,3. Axenovich and Csik\'{o}s (2019) ask for which integers n5n \geq 5 do there exist PnP_{n}-induced-saturated graphs. R\"{a}ty (2019) constructed such a graph for n=6n=6, and Cho, Choi and Park (2019) later constructed such graphs for all n=3kn=3k for k2k \geq 2. We show by a different construction that PnP_{n}-induced-saturated graphs exist for all n6n \geq 6, leaving only the case n=5n=5 open.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2005.05033,
  title  = {$P_{n}$-induced-saturated graphs exist for all $n \geq 6$},
  author = {Vojtěch Dvořák},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.05033},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

5 pages, 2 figures; added note about the case n=5 being solved in previously unpublished work of different authors

R2 v1 2026-06-23T15:27:12.526Z