Short monochromatic odd cycles

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Janzer, Oliver, Yip, Fredy
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Janzer, Oliver
Yip, Fredy
author_facet Janzer, Oliver
Yip, Fredy
contents It is easy to see that every $k$-edge-colouring of the complete graph on $2^k+1$ vertices contains a monochromatic odd cycle. In 1973, Erdős and Graham asked to estimate the smallest $L(k)$ such that every $k$-edge-colouring of $K_{2^k+1}$ contains a monochromatic odd cycle of length at most $L(k)$. Recently, Girão and Hunter obtained the first nontrivial upper bound by showing that $L(k)=O(\frac{2^k}{k^{1-o(1)}})$, which improves the trivial bound by a polynomial factor. We obtain an exponential improvement by proving that $L(k)=O(k^{3/2}2^{k/2})$. Our proof combines tools from algebraic combinatorics and approximation theory.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_14910
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Short monochromatic odd cycles
Janzer, Oliver
Yip, Fredy
Combinatorics
It is easy to see that every $k$-edge-colouring of the complete graph on $2^k+1$ vertices contains a monochromatic odd cycle. In 1973, Erdős and Graham asked to estimate the smallest $L(k)$ such that every $k$-edge-colouring of $K_{2^k+1}$ contains a monochromatic odd cycle of length at most $L(k)$. Recently, Girão and Hunter obtained the first nontrivial upper bound by showing that $L(k)=O(\frac{2^k}{k^{1-o(1)}})$, which improves the trivial bound by a polynomial factor. We obtain an exponential improvement by proving that $L(k)=O(k^{3/2}2^{k/2})$. Our proof combines tools from algebraic combinatorics and approximation theory.
title Short monochromatic odd cycles
topic Combinatorics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14910