Exact solutions to the ErdH{o}s-Rothschild problem


Abstract in English

Let $textbf{k} := (k_1,ldots,k_s)$ be a sequence of natural numbers. For a graph $G$, let $F(G;textbf{k})$ denote the number of colourings of the edges of $G$ with colours $1,dots,s$ such that, for every $c in {1,dots,s}$, the edges of colour $c$ contain no clique of order $k_c$. Write $F(n;textbf{k})$ to denote the maximum of $F(G;textbf{k})$ over all graphs $G$ on $n$ vertices. There are currently very few known exact (or asymptotic) results known for this problem, posed by ErdH{o}s and Rothschild in 1974. We prove some new exact results for $n to infty$: (i) A sufficient condition on $textbf{k}$ which guarantees that every extremal graph is a complete multipartite graph, which systematically recovers all existing exact results. (ii) Addressing the original question of ErdH{o}s and Rothschild, in the case $textbf{k}=(3,ldots,3)$ of length $7$, the unique extremal graph is the complete balanced $8$-partite graph, with colourings coming from Hadamard matrices of order $8$. (iii) In the case $textbf{k}=(k+1,k)$, for which the sufficient condition in (i) does not hold, for $3 leq k leq 10$, the unique extremal graph is complete $k$-partite with one part of size less than $k$ and the other parts as equal in size as possible.

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