Upper density of monochromatic infinite paths
Editorial introduction
Ramsey Theory investigates the existence of large monochromatic substructures. Unlike the most classical case of monochromatic complete subgraphs, the maximum guaranteed length of a monochromatic path in a two-edge-colored complete graph is well-understood. Gerencsér and Gyárfás in 1967 showed that any two-edge-coloring of a complete graph Kn contains a monochromatic path with ⌊2n/3⌋+1 vertices. The following two-edge-coloring shows that this is the best possible: partition the vertices of Kn into two sets A and B such that |A|=⌊n/3⌋ and |B|=⌈2n/3⌉, and color the edges between A and B red and edges inside each of the sets blue. The longest red path has 2|A|+1 vertices and the longest blue path has |B| vertices.
The main result of this paper concerns the corresponding problem for countably infinite graphs. To measure the size of a monochromatic subgraph, we associate the vertices with positive integers and consider the lower and the upper density of the vertex set of a monochromatic subgraph. The upper density of a subset A of positive integers is the limit superior of |A∩{1,...,}|/n, and the lower density is the limit inferior. The following example shows that there need not exist a monochromatic path with positive upper density such that its vertices form an increasing sequence: an edge joining vertices i and j is colored red if ⌊log2i⌋≠⌊log2j⌋, and blue otherwise. In particular, the coloring yields blue cliques with 1, 2, 4, 8, etc., vertices mutually joined by red edges. Likewise, there are constructions of two-edge-colorings such that the lower density of every monochromatic path is zero.
A result of Rado from the 1970’s asserts that the vertices of any k-edge-colored countably infinite complete graph can be covered by k monochromatic paths. For a two-edge-colored complete graph on the positive integers, this implies the existence of a monochromatic path with upper density at least 1/2. In 1993, Erdős and Galvin raised the problem of determining the largest c such that every two-edge-coloring of the complete graph on the positive integers contains a monochromatic path with upper density at least c. The authors solve this 25-year-old problem by showing that c=(12+√8)/17≈0.87226.