The maximum number of cliques in disjoint copies of graphs

Abstract

The problem of determining the maximum number of copies of $T$ in an $H$-free graph, for any graphs $T$ and $H$, was considered by Alon and Shikhelman. This is a variant of Turán's classical extremal problem. We show lower and upper bounds for the maximum number of $s$-cliques in a graph with no disjoint copies of arbitrary graph. We also determine the maximum number of $s$-cliques in an $n$-vertex graph that does not contain a disjoint union of $k$ paths of length two when $k=2,3$, or $s⩾k+2$, or $n$ is sufficiently large, this partly confirms a conjecture posed by Chen, Yang, Yuan, and Zhang \cite{2024Chen113974}.