English

Sharp thresholds for higher powers of Hamilton cycles in random graphs

Combinatorics 2025-02-21 v1

Abstract

For k4k \geq 4, we establish that p=(e/n)1/kp = (e/n)^{1/k} is a sharp threshold for the existence of the kk-th power HH of a Hamilton cycle in the binomial random graph model. Our proof builds upon an approach by Riordan based on the second moment method, which previously established a weak threshold for HH. This method expresses the second moment bound through contributions of subgraphs of HH, with two key quantities: the number of copies of each subgraph in HH and the subgraphs' densities. We control these two quantities more precisely by carefully restructuring Riordan's proof and treating sparse and dense subgraphs of HH separately. This allows us to determine the exact constant in the threshold.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2502.14515,
  title  = {Sharp thresholds for higher powers of Hamilton cycles in random graphs},
  author = {Tamás Makai and Matija Pasch and Kalina Petrova and Leon Schiller},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.14515},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

15 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-28T21:51:17.199Z