Forum of Mathematics, Sigma (Jan 2023)

Ramsey numbers of cycles versus general graphs

  • John Haslegrave,
  • Joseph Hyde,
  • Jaehoon Kim,
  • Hong Liu

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1017/fms.2023.6
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11

Abstract

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The Ramsey number $R(F,H)$ is the minimum number N such that any N-vertex graph either contains a copy of F or its complement contains H. Burr in 1981 proved a pleasingly general result that, for any graph H, provided n is sufficiently large, a natural lower bound construction gives the correct Ramsey number involving cycles: $R(C_n,H)=(n-1)(\chi (H)-1)+\sigma (H)$ , where $\sigma (H)$ is the minimum possible size of a colour class in a $\chi (H)$ -colouring of H. Allen, Brightwell and Skokan conjectured that the same should be true already when $n\geq \lvert H\rvert \chi (H)$ .

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