English

Sabotage the Mantel Theorem

Combinatorics 2025-07-01 v1

Abstract

One of the earliest results in extremal graph theory, Mantel's theorem, states that the maximum number of edges in a triangle-free graph GG on nn vertices is n2/4\lfloor n^2/4 \rfloor. We investigate how this extremal bound is affected when GG is additionally required to contain a prescribed graph P\mathbb{P} as a subgraph. We establish general upper and lower bounds for this problem, which are tight in the exponent for random triangle-free graphs and graphs generated by the triangle-free process, when the size of P\mathbb{P} lies within certain ranges.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2506.23794,
  title  = {Sabotage the Mantel Theorem},
  author = {Natalie Behague and Debsoumya Chakraborti and Xizhi Liu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.23794},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

short note, comments are welcome

R2 v1 2026-07-01T03:39:26.384Z