Minimizing the number of edges in ${\mathcal{C}}_{\ge r}$-saturated graphs

Abstract

Given a family of graphs $\mathcal{F}$, a graph $G$ is said to be $\mathcal{F}$-saturated if $G$ does not contain a copy of $F$ as a subgraph for any $F\in \mathcal{F}$ but the addition of any edge $e\notin E(G)$ creates at least one copy of some $F\in \mathcal{F}$ within $G$. The minimum size of an $\mathcal{F}$-saturated graph on $n$ vertices are called the saturation number, denoted by $\sat(n, \mathcal{F})$. Let ${\mathcal{C}}_{\ge r}$ be the family of cycles of length at least $r$. Ferrara et al. (2012) gave lower and upper bounds of $\sat(n, C_{\ge r})$ and determined the exact values of $\sat(n, C_{\ge r})$ for $3\le r\le 5$. In this paper, we determine the exact value of $\sat(n,\mathcal{C}_{\ge r})$ for $r=6$ and $28\le \frac{n}{2}\le r\le n$ and give new upper and lower bounds for the other cases.

23 pages