English

Twins in graphs

Combinatorics 2014-05-06 v1

Abstract

A basic pigeonhole principle insures an existence of two objects of the same type if the number of objects is larger than the number of types. Can such a principle be extended to a more complex combinatorial structure? Here, we address such a question for graphs. We call two disjoint subsets A,BA, B of vertices \emph{\textbf{twins}} if they have the same cardinality and induce subgraphs of the same size. Let t(G)t(G) be the largest kk such that GG has twins on kk vertices each. We provide the bounds on t(G)t(G) in terms of the number of edges and vertices using discrepancy results for induced subgraphs. In addition, we give conditions under which t(G)=V(G)/2t(G)= |V(G)|/2 and show that if GG is a forest then t(G)V(G)/21t(G) \geq |V(G)|/2 - 1.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1303.5626,
  title  = {Twins in graphs},
  author = {Maria Axenovich and Ryan R. Martin and Torsten Ueckerdt},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1303.5626},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

12 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-21T23:46:38.244Z