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1. On the Maximum Spread of Planar and Outerplanar Graphs

   https://doi.org/10.37236/11844  

   Li, Zelong; Linz, William; Lu, Linyuan; Wang, Zhiyu (July 2024, The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics)

   The spread of a graph $$G$$ is the difference between the largest and smallest eigenvalue of the adjacency matrix of $$G$$. Gotshall, O'Brien and Tait conjectured that for sufficiently large $$n$$, the $$n$$-vertex outerplanar graph with maximum spread is the graph obtained by joining a vertex to a path on $n-1$ vertices. In this paper, we disprove this conjecture by showing that the extremal graph is the graph obtained by joining a vertex to a path on $$\lceil(2n-1)/3\rceil$$ vertices and $$\lfloor(n-2)/3\rfloor$$ isolated vertices. For planar graphs, we show that the extremal $$n$$-vertex planar graph attaining the maximum spread is the graph obtained by joining two nonadjacent vertices to a path on $$\lceil(2n-2)/3\rceil$$ vertices and $$\lfloor(n-4)/3\rfloor$$ isolated vertices. 

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2. Maximum spread of graphs and bipartite graphs

   https://doi.org/10.1090/cams/14  

   Breen, Jane; Riasanovsky, Alex W.; Tait, Michael; Urschel, John (December 2022, Communications of the American Mathematical Society)

   Given any graph G G , the spread of G G is the maximum difference between any two eigenvalues of the adjacency matrix of G G . In this paper, we resolve a pair of 20-year-old conjectures of Gregory, Hershkowitz, and Kirkland regarding the spread of graphs. The first states that for all positive integers n n , the n n -vertex graph G G that maximizes spread is the join of a clique and an independent set, with ⌊ 2 n / 3 ⌋ \lfloor 2n/3 \rfloor and ⌈ n / 3 ⌉ \lceil n/3 \rceil vertices, respectively. Using techniques from the theory of graph limits and numerical analysis, we prove this claim for all n n sufficiently large. As an intermediate step, we prove an analogous result for a family of operators in the Hilbert space over L 2 [ 0 , 1 ] \mathscr {L}^2[0,1] . The second conjecture claims that for any fixed m ≤ n 2 / 4 m \leq n^2/4 , if G G maximizes spread over all n n -vertex graphs with m m edges, then G G is bipartite. We prove an asymptotic version of this conjecture. Furthermore, we construct an infinite family of counterexamples, which shows that our asymptotic solution is tight up to lower-order error terms. 

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3. An Ore-Type Condition for Hamiltonicity in Tough Graphs and the Extremal Examples

   https://doi.org/10.37236/12483  

   Sanka, Masahiro; Shan, Songling (January 2024, The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics)

   Let $$G$$ be a $$t$$-tough graph on $$n\ge 3$$ vertices for some $t>0$. It was shown by Bauer et al. in 1995 that if the minimum degree of $$G$$ is greater than $$\frac{n}{t+1}-1$$, then $$G$$ is hamiltonian. In terms of Ore-type hamiltonicity conditions, the problem was only studied when $$t$$ is between 1 and 2, and recently the second author proved a general result. The result states that if the degree sum of any two nonadjacent vertices of $$G$$ is greater than $$\frac{2n}{t+1}+t-2$$, then $$G$$ is hamiltonian. It was conjectured in the same paper that the $+t$ in the bound $$\frac{2n}{t+1}+t-2$$ can be removed. Here we confirm the conjecture. The result generalizes the result by Bauer, Broersma, van den Heuvel, and Veldman. Furthermore, we characterize all $$t$$-tough graphs $$G$$ on $$n\ge 3$$ vertices for which $$\sigma_2(G) = \frac{2n}{t+1}-2$$ but $$G$$ is non-hamiltonian. 

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4. Sharp bounds for decomposing graphs into edges and triangles

   https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963548320000358  

   Blumenthal, Adam; Lidický, Bernard; Pehova, Yanitsa; Pfender, Florian; Pikhurko, Oleg; Volec, Jan (March 2021, Combinatorics, Probability and Computing)

   null (Ed.)

   Abstract For a real constant α , let $$\pi _3^\alpha (G)$$ be the minimum of twice the number of K 2 ’s plus α times the number of K 3 ’s over all edge decompositions of G into copies of K 2 and K 3 , where K r denotes the complete graph on r vertices. Let $$\pi _3^\alpha (n)$$ be the maximum of $$\pi _3^\alpha (G)$$ over all graphs G with n vertices. The extremal function $$\pi _3^3(n)$$ was first studied by Győri and Tuza ( Studia Sci. Math. Hungar. 22 (1987) 315–320). In recent progress on this problem, Král’, Lidický, Martins and Pehova ( Combin. Probab. Comput. 28 (2019) 465–472) proved via flag algebras that $$\pi _3^3(n) \le (1/2 + o(1)){n^2}$$ . We extend their result by determining the exact value of $$\pi _3^\alpha (n)$$ and the set of extremal graphs for all α and sufficiently large n . In particular, we show for α = 3 that K n and the complete bipartite graph $${K_{\lfloor n/2 \rfloor,\lceil n/2 \rceil }}$$ are the only possible extremal examples for large n . 

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5. Short Proof of the Asymptotic Confirmation of the Faudree-Lehel Conjecture

   https://doi.org/10.37236/11413  

   Przybyło, Jakub; Wei, Fan (October 2023, The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics)

   Given a simple graph $$G$$, the irregularity strength of $$G$$, denoted $s(G)$, is the least positive integer $$k$$ such that there is a weight assignment on edges $$f: E(G) \to \{1,2,\dots, k\}$$ for which each vertex weight $$f^V(v):= \sum_{u: \{u,v\}\in E(G)} f(\{u,v\})$$ is unique amongst all $$v\in V(G)$$. In 1987, Faudree and Lehel conjectured that there is a constant $$c$$ such that $$s(G) \leq n/d + c$$ for all $$d$$-regular graphs $$G$$ on $$n$$ vertices with $d>1$, whereas it is trivial that $$s(G) \geq n/d$$. In this short note we prove that the Faudree-Lehel Conjecture holds when $$d \geq n^{0.8+\epsilon}$$ for any fixed $$\epsilon >0$$, with a small additive constant $c=28$ for $$n$$ large enough. Furthermore, we confirm the conjecture asymptotically by proving that for any fixed $$\beta\in(0,1/4)$$ there is a constant $$C$$ such that for all $$d$$-regular graphs $$G$$, $$s(G) \leq \frac{n}{d}(1+\frac{C}{d^{\beta}})+28$$, extending and improving a recent result of Przybyło that $$s(G) \leq \frac{n}{d}(1+ \frac{1}{\ln^{\epsilon/19}n})$$ whenever $$d\in [\ln^{1+\epsilon} n, n/\ln^{\epsilon}n]$$ and $$n$$ is large enough. 

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