Spectral extremal problem on $t$ copies of $\ell$-cycle

Abstract

Denote by $t{C}_{\ell }$ the disjoint union of $t$ cycles of length $\ell$. Let $ex(n,F)$ and $spex(n,F)$ be the maximum size and spectral radius over all $n$-vertex $F$-free graphs, respectively. In this paper, we shall pay attention to the study of both $ex(n,t{C}_{\ell })$ and $spex(n,t{C}_{\ell })$. On the one hand, we determine $ex(n,t{C}_{2\ell +1})$ and characterize the extremal graph for any integers $t,\ell$ and $n\ge f(t,\ell )$, where $f(t,\ell )=O(t{\ell }^2)$. This generalizes the result on $ex(n,t{C}_3)$ of Erdős [Arch. Math. 13 (1962) 222--227] as well as the research on $ex(n,C_{2\ell +1})$ of Füredi and Gunderson [Combin. Probab. Comput. 24 (2015) 641--645]. On the other hand, we focus on the spectral Turán-type function $spex(n,t{C}_{\ell })$, and determine the extremal graph for any fixed $t,\ell$ and large enough $n$. Our results not only extend some classic spectral extremal results on triangles, quadrilaterals and general odd cycles due to Nikiforov, but also develop the famous spectral even cycle conjecture proposed by Nikiforov (2010) and confirmed by Cioabă, Desai and Tait (2022).

25 pages, one figure