English

Sharp results for the Erd\H{o}s, Pach, Pollack and Tuza problem

Combinatorics 2025-02-13 v1

Abstract

We consider the Erd\H{o}s, Pach, Pollack and Tuza problem, asking for the maximum diameter of a graph with given order nn, minimum degree δ\delta and clique number at most ω\omega. We solve their problem asymptotically for the first hard case, ω3\omega \leq 3, for the smallest values of δ\delta by determining the smallest rational number f(δ)f(\delta) such that diam(G)f(δ)n+O(1)diam(G) \leq f(\delta)n+O(1) for all graphs GG with order nn, minimum degree δ\delta and clique number ω3\omega \leq 3. We also consider the weaker version where the clique number ω3\omega \leq 3 is replaced by having chromatic number χ3\chi \leq 3 and solve this version for small δ\delta, thereby yielding a counterexample to a conjecture of Erd\H{o}s et al. in a regime where this conjecture was still open. When restricting the conjecture to graphs with chromatic number χ3\chi \leq 3, we show that this counterexample appears for the smallest possible δ\delta, namely δ=16.\delta=16.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2502.08626,
  title  = {Sharp results for the Erd\H{o}s, Pach, Pollack and Tuza problem},
  author = {Stijn Cambie and Jorik Jooken},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.08626},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

16 pages (out of which 5 are appendix), 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T21:42:02.758Z