On the Ramsey numbers of wheels, cycles, and stars

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: DeBiasio, Louis, Wimbish, Tucker
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author DeBiasio, Louis
Wimbish, Tucker
author_facet DeBiasio, Louis
Wimbish, Tucker
contents The wheel $W_{k}$ is the graph on $k+1$ vertices consisting of a vertex joined to a cycle of length $k$, and we say that $W_k$ is an even wheel if $k$ is even. Mao, Wang, Magnant, Schiermeyer proved that the Ramsey number of $W_{2n}$ is between $4n+1$ and $12n-2$. We improve both of these bounds, showing that $5n-\frac{1+(-1)^{n}}{2}\leq R(W_{2n})\leq 8n+664$ for all integers $n\geq 2$. The main focus of the paper concerns two general results on the Ramsey numbers of stars versus even wheels and even cycles versus even wheels, from which the above bounds are obtained as a corollary. That is, we asymptotically determine $R(K_{1,m}, W_{2n})$ and $R(C_{2m}, W_{2n})$ for all sufficiently large $m$ and $n$, both of which were open problems for most regimes. As for odd wheels, we note that the analogous values for stars versus odd wheels and odd cycles versus odd wheels were already known exactly, from which it follows that $6n+4=R(K_{1,2n+1}, W_{2n+1})\leq R(W_{2n+1})\leq 2\cdot R(C_{2n+1}, W_{2n+1})=12n+2$. Very recently, Zhang and Chen improved the upper bound to $R(W_{2n+1})\leq \frac{32n}{3}+O(1)$. We are able to refine their proof, further improving the upper bound to $R(W_{2n+1})\leq 10n+O(1)$.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_11937
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On the Ramsey numbers of wheels, cycles, and stars
DeBiasio, Louis
Wimbish, Tucker
Combinatorics
The wheel $W_{k}$ is the graph on $k+1$ vertices consisting of a vertex joined to a cycle of length $k$, and we say that $W_k$ is an even wheel if $k$ is even. Mao, Wang, Magnant, Schiermeyer proved that the Ramsey number of $W_{2n}$ is between $4n+1$ and $12n-2$. We improve both of these bounds, showing that $5n-\frac{1+(-1)^{n}}{2}\leq R(W_{2n})\leq 8n+664$ for all integers $n\geq 2$. The main focus of the paper concerns two general results on the Ramsey numbers of stars versus even wheels and even cycles versus even wheels, from which the above bounds are obtained as a corollary. That is, we asymptotically determine $R(K_{1,m}, W_{2n})$ and $R(C_{2m}, W_{2n})$ for all sufficiently large $m$ and $n$, both of which were open problems for most regimes. As for odd wheels, we note that the analogous values for stars versus odd wheels and odd cycles versus odd wheels were already known exactly, from which it follows that $6n+4=R(K_{1,2n+1}, W_{2n+1})\leq R(W_{2n+1})\leq 2\cdot R(C_{2n+1}, W_{2n+1})=12n+2$. Very recently, Zhang and Chen improved the upper bound to $R(W_{2n+1})\leq \frac{32n}{3}+O(1)$. We are able to refine their proof, further improving the upper bound to $R(W_{2n+1})\leq 10n+O(1)$.
title On the Ramsey numbers of wheels, cycles, and stars
topic Combinatorics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.11937