Nearly tight exponents for off-diagonal Ramsey numbers

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Bradač, Domagoj
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866913168482107392
author Bradač, Domagoj
author_facet Bradač, Domagoj
contents We construct a new family of $K_s$-free graphs that leads to improved lower bounds for Ramsey numbers across a wide range of parameters. For any fixed $s \ge 4$, we show that the off-diagonal Ramsey numbers satisfy $r(s, k) \ge k^{s-2 + o(1)}.$ For $s \ge 6,$ this improves the best known lower bound of the form $r(s, k) \ge k^{\frac{s+1}{2} + o(1)}$ which was first established by Spencer in 1977 and has since only seen logarithmic improvements. This nearly matches the best known upper bound which is of the form $r(s, k) \le k^{s-1 + o(1)}$ and which is widely believed to give the correct exponent. More generally, we show that if $s, k/s \rightarrow \infty$, then $r(s, k) = \left(\frac{k}{s}\right)^{(1+o(1)) s},$ where the upper follows from the seminal work of Erdős and Szekeres in 1935. We also obtain improved lower bounds for Ramsey numbers extremely close to the diagonal as well as for diagonal multicolor Ramsey numbers.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_28793
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Nearly tight exponents for off-diagonal Ramsey numbers
Bradač, Domagoj
Combinatorics
We construct a new family of $K_s$-free graphs that leads to improved lower bounds for Ramsey numbers across a wide range of parameters. For any fixed $s \ge 4$, we show that the off-diagonal Ramsey numbers satisfy $r(s, k) \ge k^{s-2 + o(1)}.$ For $s \ge 6,$ this improves the best known lower bound of the form $r(s, k) \ge k^{\frac{s+1}{2} + o(1)}$ which was first established by Spencer in 1977 and has since only seen logarithmic improvements. This nearly matches the best known upper bound which is of the form $r(s, k) \le k^{s-1 + o(1)}$ and which is widely believed to give the correct exponent. More generally, we show that if $s, k/s \rightarrow \infty$, then $r(s, k) = \left(\frac{k}{s}\right)^{(1+o(1)) s},$ where the upper follows from the seminal work of Erdős and Szekeres in 1935. We also obtain improved lower bounds for Ramsey numbers extremely close to the diagonal as well as for diagonal multicolor Ramsey numbers.
title Nearly tight exponents for off-diagonal Ramsey numbers
topic Combinatorics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.28793