English

Supersaturation in Nosal graphs: Triangles and books

Combinatorics 2026-07-18 v1

Abstract

In this paper, we use the spectral surplus λ(G)m\lambda(G) - \sqrt{m} to measure how far GG lies above the Nosal threshold, and prove the following edge-spectral supersaturation results for triangles and books. (a) Every graph GG with m3m\ge 3 edges and λ(G)1+m2\lambda(G) \ge 1 + \sqrt{m-2} contains at least m2m-2 triangles, with equality if and only if G=K3m33K1G = K_3 \vee \tfrac{m-3}{3} K_1. This can be viewed as the third-layer supersaturation in the jump phenomenon, after the first layer t(G)12(m1)t(G) \ge \lfloor \tfrac{1}{2}(\sqrt{m}-1) \rfloor proved by Ning and Zhai, and the second layer t(G)m12t(G) \ge \tfrac{m-1}{2} by Zhang and Zhai. (b) Every mm-edge graph GG satisfies t(G)m(λm)t(G) \ge m\bigl(\lambda - \sqrt{m}\,\bigr), with equality if and only if GG is complete bipartite. Consequently, λ(G)m+q\lambda(G) \ge \sqrt{m} + q forces t(G)>qmt(G) > q m for every real q>0q > 0. This is an edge-spectral counterpart of the Lov\'asz--Simonovits theorem, and it improves the Bollob\'as--Nikiforov bound t(G)13λ(λ2m)t(G) \ge \tfrac13 \lambda(\lambda^2 - m) in the range mλ(G)1.3m\sqrt m \le \lambda(G) \le 1.3\sqrt m . (c) Every mm-edge Nosal graph GG contains a book of size greater than 14m\tfrac14 \sqrt{m}. This improves two recent results on the booksize constant: 124\tfrac{1}{24} proved by Li, Liu and Zhang, and 19\tfrac19 by Zhai, Li and Lou. This narrows the gap toward the conjectured optimal constant 13\tfrac13. (d) Every mm-edge Nosal graph GG contains at least (18o(1))m\bigl(\tfrac{1}{8} - o(1)\bigr) m copies of the kite C4+=B2C_4^+=B_2, and the constant 18\tfrac18 is best possible. This determines the sharp asymptotic constant for counting C4+C_4^+ and strengthens the Ω(m)\Omega(m) bound of Li, Liu and Zhang.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.16746,
  title  = {Supersaturation in Nosal graphs: Triangles and books},
  author = {Hongzhang Chen and Yongtao Li and Quanyu Tang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.16746},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

31 pages, 1 figure. Spectral extremal graph theory