Ramsey games near the critical threshold

Abstract

A well-known result of Rödl and Ruciński states that for any graph $H$ there exists a constant $C$ such that if $p\ge C{n}^{-1/m_2(H)}$, then the random graph $G_{n,p}$ is a.a.s. $H$-Ramsey, that is, any $2$-colouring of its edges contains a monochromatic copy of $H$. Aside from a few simple exceptions, the corresponding $0$-statement also holds, that is, there exists $c>0$ such that whenever $p\le c{n}^{-1/m_2(H)}$ the random graph $G_{n,p}$ is a.a.s. not $H$-Ramsey. We show that near this threshold, even when $G_{n,p}$ is not $H$-Ramsey, it is often extremely close to being $H$-Ramsey. More precisely, we prove that for any constant $c>0$ and any strictly $2$-balanced graph $H$, if $p\ge c{n}^{-1/m_2(H)}$, then the random graph $G_{n,p}$ a.a.s. has the property that every $2$-edge-colouring without monochromatic copies of $H$ cannot be extended to an $H$-free colouring after $\ddot{I}‰(1)$ extra random edges are added. This generalises a result by Friedgut, Kohayakawa, Rödl, Ruciński and Tetali, who in 2002 proved the same statement for triangles, and addresses a question raised by those authors. We also extend a result of theirs on the three-colour case and show that these theorems need not hold when $H$ is not strictly $2$-balanced.

18 pages, 6 figures; to appear in Random Structures & Algorithms