Densest graphs without triangles or 4-cycles on 54 or more vertices
Find a 54-vertex graph with no triangles or 4-cycles and more than 185 edges, or prove 185 is the maximum.
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| 1 | +# Densest graphs without triangles or 4-cycles on 54 or more vertices | |
| 2 | + | |
| 3 | +How many edges can a graph on $n$ vertices have if it contains no cycle of length 3 or 4? The exact answer is known for every $n \le 53$, after computer searches by Brendan McKay in 2022 and 2023, and the first open case is $n = 54$. | |
| 4 | + | |
| 5 | +## Problem | |
| 6 | + | |
| 7 | +The girth of a graph is the length of its shortest cycle. Let $f(n)$ be the largest number of edges in a simple graph on $n$ vertices with girth at least 5, that is, with no triangle and no 4-cycle (OEIS A006856). Determine $f(54)$, and more generally $f(n)$ for $n \ge 54$. CSPLib also asks for the number of non-isomorphic graphs attaining $f(n)$, and for the analogous values with larger forbidden girth. | |
| 8 | + | |
| 9 | +## Background | |
| 10 | + | |
| 11 | +The question is CSPLib problem 52, proposed by Michael Codish, Alice Miller, Patrick Prosser and Peter Stuckey. Garnick, Kwong and Lazebnik (1993) determined $f(n)$ for $n \le 24$ and gave constructive lower bounds up to $n = 200$; later searches pushed the exact values to $n = 32$. The extremal graphs include famous objects: the unique graph attaining $f(50) = 175$ is the Hoffman–Singleton graph. The growth of $f(n)$ for large $n$, whether $f(n) \sim (n/2)^{3/2}$, is Erdős Problem #573 and is a different, asymptotic question from the exact values asked here. | |
| 12 | + | |
| 13 | +## What is known | |
| 14 | + | |
| 15 | +- Values for $n = 1, \dots, 53$ are listed in the OEIS; for example $f(32) = 85$, $f(50) = 175$, $f(52) = 178$ and $f(53) = 181$. | |
| 16 | +- Brendan McKay computed $f(33), \dots, f(52)$ in March 2022 and $f(53)$ in January 2023. | |
| 17 | +- McKay also reported the lower bounds $f(54) \ge 185$, $f(55) \ge 189$ and $f(56) \ge 193$ (January 2023), so the open question for $n = 54$ is whether some graph of girth at least 5 has 186 or more edges. | |
| 18 | +- Mehrabian et al. (2024) ran AlphaZero and tabu search on this problem and improved the lower bounds for most sizes between 64 and 190, but for $n = 54$, 55 and 56 their best graphs only match McKay's bounds. | |
| 19 | + | |
| 20 | +## What would count as progress | |
| 21 | + | |
| 22 | +- A graph on 54 vertices with girth at least 5 and at least 186 edges (or a similar improvement for a larger $n$), given as an edge list. A script checks the edge count and the absence of 3- and 4-cycles in milliseconds. | |
| 23 | +- A proof that $f(54) = 185$, for example an exhaustive search with symmetry breaking whose code and logs can be rerun, together with the number of extremal graphs. This is a separate and harder kind of progress than a construction. | |
| 24 | + | |
| 25 | +## References | |
| 26 | + | |
| 27 | +1. D. K. Garnick, Y. H. H. Kwong and F. Lazebnik (1993). Extremal graphs without three-cycles or four-cycles. *Journal of Graph Theory* 17, 633–645. https://doi.org/10.1002/jgt.3190170511 | |
| 28 | +2. A. Mehrabian, A. Anand, H. Kim et al. (2024). Finding increasingly large extremal graphs with AlphaZero and tabu search. *IJCAI 2024*; arXiv:2311.03583. https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.03583 | |
| 29 | +3. OEIS A006856, Maximal number of edges in n-node graph of girth at least 5, with values and bounds by B. D. McKay (2022, 2023). https://oeis.org/A006856 | |
| 30 | +4. Erdős Problem #573, on the asymptotic growth of these numbers. https://www.erdosproblems.com/573 | |
| 31 | + | |
| 32 | +## Source | |
| 33 | + | |
| 34 | +Imported from [CSPLib prob052](https://www.csplib.org/Problems/prob052/), curated by CSPLib editors. Open according to the source as of 2026-10-20. The statement above is written in our own words; see the source for the original wording, history and discussion. | |