On the Ramsey numbers of wheels, cycles, and stars

TL;DR

This paper improves bounds on the Ramsey numbers of wheels, cycles, and stars, providing asymptotic results for even wheels and refining upper bounds for odd wheels.

Contribution

It offers new bounds and asymptotic formulas for Ramsey numbers involving wheels, cycles, and stars, addressing previously open problems.

Findings

Improved bounds for R(W_{2n}) to 5n - (1+(-1)^n)/2 ≤ R(W_{2n}) ≤ 8n + 664.

Asymptotic determination of R(K_{1,m}, W_{2n}) and R(C_{2m}, W_{2n}) for large m,n.

Refined upper bound for R(W_{2n+1}) to 10n + O(1).

Abstract

The wheel $W_{k}$ is the graph on $k+1$ vertices consisting of a vertex joined to a cycle of length $k$, and we say that $W_k$ is an even wheel if $k$ is even. Mao, Wang, Magnant, Schiermeyer proved that the Ramsey number of $W_{2n}$ is between $4n+1$ and $12n-2$. We improve both of these bounds, showing that $5n-\frac{1+(-1)^{n}}{2}\leq R(W_{2n})\leq 8n+664$ for all integers $n\geq 2$. The main focus of the paper concerns two general results on the Ramsey numbers of stars versus even wheels and even cycles versus even wheels, from which the above bounds are obtained as a corollary. That is, we asymptotically determine $R(K_{1,m}, W_{2n})$ and $R(C_{2m}, W_{2n})$ for all sufficiently large $m$ and $n$, both of which were open problems for most regimes. As for odd wheels, we note that the analogous values for stars versus odd wheels and odd cycles versus odd wheels were already known exactly, from which it follows that $6n+4=R(K_{1,2n+1}, W_{2n+1})\leq R(W_{2n+1})\leq 2\cdot R(C_{2n+1}, W_{2n+1})=12n+2$. Very recently, Zhang and Chen improved the upper bound to $R(W_{2n+1})\leq \frac{32n}{3}+O(1)$. We are able to refine their proof, further improving the upper bound to $R(W_{2n+1})\leq 10n+O(1)$.