English

Robustness and hyperstability for the Erdős-Gallai theorem

Combinatorics 2026-07-02 v1

Abstract

The Erd\H{o}s-Gallai theorem states that every graph of average degree dd contains a cycle of length at least dd. We prove the following robust extension of the Erd\H{o}s-Gallai theorem: For every c>0c>0 there exists KK such that for all dKd\geq K, pK/dp\geq K/d and every graph GG with average degree dd, the random graph GpG_p obtained by independently percolating each edge of GG with probability pp contains a cycle of length (1c)d(1-c)d asymptotically almost surely as V(G)|V(G)|\to \infty. With related methods, we prove the following hyperstability version of the Erd\H{o}s-Gallai theorem: any graph GG without a cycle of length at least dd is at most cdnc dn edge deletions away from a graph all of whose connected components have a vertex-cover of size (1+c)d(1+c)d. At the core of our argument lies a very general structure theorem about graphs that originates from results of Pokrovskiy concerning the hyperstability of bounded-degree trees.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.02483,
  title  = {Robustness and hyperstability for the Erdős-Gallai theorem},
  author = {Micha Christoph and Alp Müyesser and Yuval Wigderson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.02483},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

21 pages, 7 pages appendix