Related papers: Triangle-free graphs with the fewest independent s…

Every $n$-vertex planar triangle-free graph with maximum degree at most $3$ has an independent set of size at least $\frac{3}{8}n$. This was first conjectured by Albertson, Bollob\'as and Tucker, and was later proved by Heckman and Thomas.…

We prove a tight upper bound on the independence polynomial (and total number of independent sets) of cubic graphs of girth at least 5. The bound is achieved by unions of the Heawood graph, the point/line incidence graph of the Fano plane.…

Let ${\rm ind}(G)$ be the number of independent sets in a graph $G$. We show that if $G$ has maximum degree at most $5$ then $$ {\rm ind}(G) \leq 2^{{\rm iso}(G)} \prod_{uv \in E(G)} {\rm ind}(K_{d(u),d(v)})^{\frac{1}{d(u)d(v)}} $$ (where…

Let $r\ge 3$ be a fixed constant and let $ {\mathcal H}$ be an $r$-uniform, $D$-regular hypergraph on $N$ vertices. Assume further that $ D > N^\varepsilon $ for some $ \varepsilon>0 $. Consider the random greedy algorithm for forming an…

Steinberg and Tovey proved that every n-vertex planar triangle-free graph has an independent set of size at least (n+1)/3, and described an infinite class of tight examples. We show that all n-vertex planar triangle-free graphs except for…

Settling Kahn's conjecture (2001), we prove the following upper bound on the number $i(G)$ of independent sets in a graph $G$ without isolated vertices: \[ i(G) \le \prod_{uv \in E(G)} i(K_{d_u,d_v})^{1/(d_u d_v)}, \] where $d_u$ is the…

A well-known conjecture by Harris states that any triangle-free $d$-degenerate graph has fractional chromatic number at most $O\left(\frac{d}{\ln d}\right)$. This conjecture has gained much attention in recent years, and is known to have…

Let $G = (V,E)$ be a graph and $k \ge 0$ an integer. A $k$-independent set $S \subseteq V$ is a set of vertices such that the maximum degree in the graph induced by $S$ is at most $k$. With $\alpha_k(G)$ we denote the maximum cardinality of…

The areas of Ramsey theory and random graphs have been closely linked ever since Erd\H{o}s' famous proof in 1947 that the 'diagonal' Ramsey numbers $R(k)$ grow exponentially in $k$. In the early 1990s, the triangle-free process was…

Let $i_t(G)$ be the number of independent sets of size $t$ in a graph $G$. Alavi, Erd\H{o}s, Malde and Schwenk made the conjecture that if $G$ is a tree then the independent set sequence $\{i_t(G)\}_{t\geq 0}$ of $G$ is unimodal; Levit and…

Paul Erd\H{o}s suggested the following problem: Determine or estimate the number of maximal triangle-free graphs on $n$ vertices. Here we show that the number of maximal triangle-free graphs is at most $2^{n^2/8+o(n^2)}$, which matches the…

Since planar triangle-free graphs are 3-colourable, such a graph with n vertices has an independent set of size at least n/3. We prove that unless the graph contains a certain obstruction, its independence number is at least n/(3-epsilon)…

Consider the following stochastic graph process. We begin with the empty graph on n vertices and add edges one at a time, where each edge is chosen uniformly at random from the collection of potential edges that do not form triangles when…

The celebrated Mantel's theorem states that any triangle-free graph on $n$ vertices contains at most $\left\lfloor n^2/4\right\rfloor$ edges. It is natural to ask how many triangles must exist in a graph with more than $\left\lfloor…

We study the algorithmic task of finding a large independent set in a sparse Erd\H{o}s-R\'{e}nyi random graph with $n$ vertices and average degree $d$. The maximum independent set is known to have size $(2 \log d / d)n$ in the double limit…

The Cayley sum graph $\Gamma_A$ of a set $A \subseteq \mathbb{Z}_n$ is defined to have vertex set $\mathbb{Z}_n$ and an edge between two distinct vertices $x, y \in \mathbb{Z}_n$ if $x + y \in A$. Green and Morris proved that if the set $A$…

We consider the following problem posed by Erdos in 1962. Suppose that $G$ is an $n$-vertex graph where the number of $s$-cliques in $G$ is $t$. How small can the independence number of $G$ be? Our main result suggests that for fixed $s$,…

The $d$-independence number of a graph $G$ is the largest possible size of an independent set $I$ in $G$ where each vertex of $I$ has degree at least $d$ in $G$. Upper bounds for the $d$-independence number in planar graphs are well-known…

The independence number $\alpha(H)$ of a hypergraph $H$ is the maximum cardinality of a set of vertices of $H$ that does not contain an edge of $H$. Generalizing Shearer's classical lower bound on the independence number of triangle-free…

A $d$-regular graph on $n$ nodes has at most $T_{\max} = \frac{n}{3} \tbinom{d}{2}$ triangles. We compute the leading asymptotics of the probability that a large random $d$-regular graph has at least $c \cdot T_{\max}$ triangles, and…