English

The number of triangles is more when they have no common vertex

Combinatorics 2020-03-11 v1

Abstract

By the theorem of Mantel [5][5] it is known that a graph with nn vertices and n24+1\lfloor \frac{n^{2}}{4} \rfloor+1 edges must contain a triangle. A theorem of Erd\H{o}s gives a strengthening: there are not only one, but at least n2\lfloor\frac{n}{2}\rfloor triangles. We give a further improvement: if there is no vertex contained by all triangles then there are at least n2n-2 of them. There are some natural generalizations when (a)(a) complete graphs are considered (rather than triangles), (b)(b) the graph has tt extra edges (not only one) or (c)(c) it is supposed that there are no ss vertices such that every triangle contains one of them. We were not able to prove these generalizations, they are posed as conjectures.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2003.04450,
  title  = {The number of triangles is more when they have no common vertex},
  author = {Chuanqi Xiao and Gyula O. H. Katona},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.04450},
  year   = {2020}
}