English

Saturated Subgraphs of the Hypercube

Combinatorics 2016-09-28 v2

Abstract

We say GG is \emph{(Qn,Qm)(Q_n,Q_m)-saturated} if it is a maximal QmQ_m-free subgraph of the nn-dimensional hypercube QnQ_n. A graph, GG, is said to be (Qn,Qm)(Q_n,Q_m)-semi-saturated if it is a subgraph of QnQ_n and adding any edge forms a new copy of QmQ_m. The minimum number of edges a (Qn,Qm)(Q_n,Q_m)-saturated graph (resp. (Qn,Qm)(Q_n,Q_m)-semi-saturated graph) can have is denoted by sat(Qn,Qm)sat(Q_n,Q_m) (resp. s-sat(Qn,Qm)s\text{-}sat(Q_n,Q_m)). We prove that limnsat(Qn,Qm)e(Qn)=0 \lim_{n\to\infty}\frac{sat(Q_n,Q_m)}{e(Q_n)}=0, for fixed mm, disproving a conjecture of Santolupo that, when m=2m=2, this limit is 14\frac{1}{4}. Further, we show by a different method that sat(Qn,Q2)=O(2n)sat(Q_n, Q_2)=O(2^n), and that s-sat(Qn,Qm)=O(2n)s\text{-}sat(Q_n, Q_m)=O(2^n), for fixed mm. We also prove the lower bound ssat(Qn,Q2)m+122ns-sat(Q_n,Q_2)\geq \frac{m+1}{2}\cdot 2^n, thus determining sat(Qn,Q2)sat(Q_n,Q_2) to within a constant factor, and discuss some further questions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1406.1766,
  title  = {Saturated Subgraphs of the Hypercube},
  author = {J. Robert Johnson and Trevor Pinto},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1406.1766},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

Journal version, 16 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-22T04:32:48.792Z