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Erdős Problem 621

References:

    erdosproblems.com/621

    [EGT96] Erdős, Paul and Gallai, Tibor and Tuza, Zsolt, Covering and independence in triangle structures. Discrete Math. (1996), 89-101.

    [Er99] Erdős, Paul, A selection of problems and results in combinatorics. Combin. Probab. Comput. (1999), 1-6.

    [NoSu16] S. Norin and Y.-R. Sun, Triangle-free independent sets vs. cuts. arXiv:1602.04370 (2016).

open SimpleGraph Classical namespace Erdos621

Let $G$ be a graph on $n$ vertices, $\alpha_1(G)$ be the maximum number of edges that contain at most one edge from every triangle, and $\tau_1(G)$ be the minimum number of edges that contain at least one edge from every triangle.

Is it true that$$\alpha_1(G)+\tau_1(G) \leq \frac{n^2}{4}?$$

A problem of Erdős, Gallai, and Tuza [EGT96], who observe that this is probably quite difficult since there are different examples where equality hold: the complete graph, the complete bipartite graph, and the graph obtained from $K_{m,m}$ by adding one vertex joined to every other.

This is true, and was proved by Norin and Sun [NoSu16], who in fact proved that$$\alpha_1(G)+\tau_B(G) \leq \frac{n^2}{4},$$where $\tau_B(G)$ is the minimum number of edges that need to be removed to make the graph bipartite.

Here $\alpha_1(G)$ and $\tau_1(G)$ are taken over subsets of the edge set of $G$, and the inequality is stated multiplied through by $4$ so that it lives in the natural numbers.

@[category research solved, AMS 5] theorem declaration uses 'sorry'erdos_621 : answer(True) (n : ) (G : SimpleGraph (Fin n)) (a t : ), IsGreatest {k : | A G.edgeFinset, A.card = k x y z : Fin n, G.Adj x y G.Adj y z G.Adj x z (({s(x, y), s(y, z), s(x, z)} : Finset (Sym2 (Fin n))) A).card 1} a IsLeast {k : | T G.edgeFinset, T.card = k x y z : Fin n, G.Adj x y G.Adj y z G.Adj x z (T ({s(x, y), s(y, z), s(x, z)} : Finset (Sym2 (Fin n)))).Nonempty} t 4 * (a + t) n ^ 2 := True (n : ) (G : SimpleGraph (Fin n)) (a t : ), IsGreatest {k | A G.edgeFinset, A.card = k (x y z : Fin n), G.Adj x y G.Adj y z G.Adj x z ({s(x, y), s(y, z), s(x, z)} A).card 1} a IsLeast {k | T G.edgeFinset, T.card = k (x y z : Fin n), G.Adj x y G.Adj y z G.Adj x z (T {s(x, y), s(y, z), s(x, z)}).Nonempty} t 4 * (a + t) n ^ 2 All goals completed! 🐙 end Erdos621