Generalized Ramsey numbers at the linear and quadratic thresholds

Patrick Bennett ; Ryan Cushman¹ ; Andrzej Dudek²

¹University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire
²Western Michigan University

The electronic journal of combinatorics, Tome 32 (2025) no. 1

Résumé

The generalized Ramsey number $f(n, p, q)$ is the smallest number of colors needed to color the edges of the complete graph $K_n$ so that every $p$-clique spans at least $q$ colors. Erdős and Gyárfás showed that $f(n, p, q)$ grows linearly in $n$ when $p$ is fixed and $q=q_{\text{lin}}(p):=\binom p2-p+3$. Similarly they showed that $f(n, p, q)$ is quadratic in $n$ when $p$ is fixed and $q=q_{\text{quad}}(p):=\binom p2-\frac p2+2$. In this note we improve on the known estimates for $f(n, p, q_{\text{lin}})$ and $f(n, p, q_{\text{quad}})$. Our proofs involve establishing a significant strengthening of a previously known connection between $f(n, p, q)$ and another extremal problem first studied by Brown, Erdős and Sós, as well as building on some recent progress on this extremal problem by Delcourt and Postle and by Shangguan. Also, our upper bound on $f(n, p, q_{\text{lin}})$ follows from an application of the recent forbidden submatchings method of Delcourt and Postle.

Détail

DOI : 10.37236/12659

Classification : 05C55, 05D10, 05C30, 05C15, 05D40
Mots-clés : extremal graph theory, probabilistic methods