English

The saturation number of $K^s_t$

Combinatorics 2026-05-11 v1

Abstract

For a given graph FF, a graph GG is said to be FF-saturated if GG contains no copy of FF but for any edge uvE(G)uv\notin E(G), G+uvG+uv contains a copy of FF. The saturation number sat(n,F)sat(n,F) is defined as the minimum number of edges among all nn-vertex FF-saturated graphs. The virus graph KtsK^s_t, where s0s\geq0 and tmax{3,s}t\geq \max\{3,s\}, is a graph of order s+ts+t constructed by attaching ss distinct leaves to ss different vertices of a complete graph KtK_t. Hua and Peng [Discrete Math. 349 (2026) 114674] determined sat(n,K32)sat(n,K^2_3) and characterized its corresponding extremal graphs. In this paper, we determine sat(n,K33)sat(n,K^3_3) and sat(n,Kt2)sat(n,K^2_t) with t4t\geq 4, together with the structural descriptions of the related extremal saturated graphs.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.07179,
  title  = {The saturation number of $K^s_t$},
  author = {Xinghui Zhao and Lihua You and Xiaoxue Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.07179},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

29 pages,0 figures