English

Small Ramsey numbers for books, wheels, and generalizations

Combinatorics 2026-02-17 v2

Abstract

In this work, we give several new upper and lower bounds on Ramsey numbers for books and wheels, including a tight upper bound establishing R(W5,W7)=15R(W_5, W_7) = 15, matching upper and lower bounds giving R(W5,W9)=18R(W_5, W_9) = 18, R(B2,B8)=21R(B_2, B_8) = 21, and R(B3,B7)=20R(B_3, B_7) = 20, and a number of additional tight lower bounds for books. We use a range of different methods: flag algebras, local search, bottom-up generation, and enumeration of polycirculant graphs. We also explore generalized Ramsey numbers using similar methods. Let GR(r,Ks,t)GR(r,K_s,t) denote the minimum number of vertices nn such that any rr-edge-coloring of KnK_n has a copy of KsK_s with at most tt colors. We establish GR(3,K4,2)=10,GR(4,K4,3)=10GR(3,K_4,2) = 10, GR(4,K_4,3) = 10, and some additional bounds.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2407.07285,
  title  = {Small Ramsey numbers for books, wheels, and generalizations},
  author = {Bernard Lidický and Gwen McKinley and Florian Pfender and Steven Van Overberghe},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.07285},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

9 pages (not including references and appendix)

R2 v1 2026-06-28T17:35:04.383Z