Sharp Bisection Bounds for Digraphs

Abstract

Fix an integer $d\ge 1$. We prove that, for all sufficiently large $m$, every digraph $D$ with $m$ arcs and minimum semidegree at least $d$ admits a bisection $V(D)=V_1\cup V_2$ with $||V_1|-|V_2||\le 1$ such that \[ \min\{e(V_1,V_2),e(V_2,V_1)\} \ge \frac{d(m+d+1)}{2(2d+1)}. \] Here, for disjoint vertex sets $A,B\subseteq V(D)$, $e(A,B)$ denotes the number of arcs directed from $A$ to $B$. For each $d$, equality holds for infinitely many values of $m$, showing that the additive term $d+1$ is best possible. This answers a question of Liu, Ma and Zu by removing the asymptotic error in the minimum-semidegree bound, strengthens the result to the bisection setting, and determines the optimal additive correction. We also prove that every $n$-vertex digraph with $m$ arcs admits a bisection in which both directed cuts have size at least $(m-n+1)/4$, and that this universal bound is sharp for out-stars.