On a refinement of the Ahlswede--Katona Theorem

Abstract

A classical theorem of Ahlswede and Katona determines the maximum density of the $2$-edge star in a graph with a given edge density. Motivated by its application in hypergraph Turán problems, we establish a refinement of their result under the additional assumption that the graph contains a large independent set in which every vertex has high degree.

26 pages, comments are welcome