Spectral radius of graphs of given size with forbidden a fan graph $F_6$

TL;DR

This paper determines the maximum spectral radius of graphs that do not contain a fan graph $F_6$ as a subgraph, completing the proof for the case $k=2$ in a broader conjecture about $F_k$-free graphs.

Contribution

It specifically solves the open case of $F_6$-free graphs, identifying the extremal graphs and their spectral radius for large graph sizes.

Findings

Maximum spectral radius for $F_6$-free graphs with size $m \\geq 88$ identified.

Extremal graphs characterized explicitly.

Completes the proof of a conjecture for the case $k=2$.

Abstract

Let $F_k=K_1\vee P_{k-1}$ be the fan graph on $k$ vertices. A graph is said to be $F_k$-free if it does not contain $F_k$ as a subgraph. Yu et al. in [arXiv:2404.03423] conjectured that for $k\geq2$ and $m$ sufficiently large, if $G$ is an $F_{2k+1}$-free or $F_{2k+2}$-free graph, then $\lambda(G)\leq \frac{k-1+\sqrt{4m-k^2+1}}{2}$ and the equality holds if and only if $G\cong K_k\vee\left(\frac{m}{k}-\frac{k-1}{2}\right)K_1$. Recently, Li et al. in [arXiv:2409.15918] showed that the above conjecture holds for $k\geq 3$. The only left case is for $k=2$, which corresponds to $F_5$ or $F_6$. Since the case of $F_5$ was solved by Yu et al. in [arXiv:2404.03423] and Zhang and Wang in [On the spectral radius of graphs without a gem, Discrete Math. 347 (2024) 114171]. So, one needs only to deal with the case of $F_6$. In this paper, we solve the only left case by determining the maximum spectral radius of $F_6$-free graphs with size $m\geq 88$, and the corresponding extremal graph.