Wiki
Wiki

Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.

Updated


Claim. The answer to Problem 1009 is yes: for every c>0c>0 there is f(c)f(c) such that every graph on nn vertices with at least ⌊n2/4⌋+k\lfloor n^2/4\rfloor+k edges, k<cnk<cn, has at least k−f(c)k-f(c) edge-disjoint triangles. The claimed result is Theorem 1 of E. Győri, On the number of edge-disjoint triangles in graphs of given size, Combinatorics (Eger, 1987), Colloq. Math. Soc. János Bolyai 52, North-Holland, Amsterdam (1988), 267--276, as a refereed later paper states it: a graph with nn vertices and t2(n)+kt_2(n)+k edges, where k=o(n2)k=o(n^2) and n→∞n\to\infty, has at least k−O(k2/n2)k-O(k^2/n^2) edge-disjoint triangles (Blumenthal, Lidický, Pehova, Pfender, Pikhurko and Volec, Combin. Probab. Comput. 30 (2021), 271--287, in the proof of its Lemma 11, p. 8 of the arXiv copy; the corpus's card is blumenthal_2021_sharp_bounds_decomposing_graphs_edges_triangles). The site adds, as its reading of the paper, that the theorem gives $f(c)\ll c^2,andthatnolossoccurs(, and that no loss occurs (f(c)=0$) when nn is odd and c<2c<2, or when nn is even and c<3/2c<3/2. The no-loss sentence is a statement for nn large in terms of cc: Section 5 of the 2021 paper states Győri's ranges, k≤2n−10k\le2n-10 for odd nn and k≤3n/2−5k\le3n/2-5 for even nn, "for large nn", cites a correction, and calls the two bounds sharp, and the paper of Balogh and Wigal (Combinatorica 2025, read in arXiv:2502.16683v2, p. 10; card) reports the same ranges and points to Győri's 1992 correction of the paper; as a statement for every nn it fails for K5K_5, K6K_6 and Sauer's graph on ten vertices, as the problem page checks. The step from the attested theorem to the question is an authored conversion on the problem page: with CC, δ\delta and n0n_0 taken from the theorem, k<cnk<cn and n≥max⁡(n0,c/δ)n\ge\max(n_0,c/\delta) give at least k−Cc2k-Cc^2 triangles, and for smaller nn the trivial bound 0>k−cn0>k-cn suffices, so f(c)=max⁡(Cc2, cmax⁡(n0,c/δ))f(c)=\max\bigl(Cc^2,\,c\max(n_0,c/\delta)\bigr) answers the question. Whether f(c)≪c2f(c)\ll c^2 holds for every cc depends on constants not visible in the attestation. Erdős's own theorem ([Er71], item 3) is the case c<12c<\tfrac12 with f(c)=0f(c)=0, and Sauer's example there shows f(2)≥1f(2)\ge1.

Acceptance. The site's curator, Thomas Bloom, labels the problem proved and credits Győri [Gy88] with the proof (the reviewed evidence; Bloom took no part in the paper), after the forum comments of 21 and 29 October 2025 identified Theorem 1 and corrected the deduction; the proof-claim tab is empty; the community database records the problem proved, with its last update dated 31 October 2025. The paper appeared in a proceedings volume (Colloq. Math. Soc. János Bolyai 52, 1988, whose year gives this page's nominal date; the zbMATH record Zbl 0706.05029 identifies the volume and carries a review summarizing the result as $ed_3(n,\lfloor n^2/4\rfloor+t)=t-o(t)$); no evidence that the volume was refereed is in hand, so refereed is not listed. The theorem is attested by the refereed quotation above, and the 2021 paper (p. 8, its [13, Theorem 1]) and Balogh and Wigal (Theorem 1.6, p. 2, their [8]) attribute to Győri's journal paper, Combinatorica 11 (1991), 231--243, the generalization to rr-cliques, r≥3r\ge3, whose case r=3r=3 is this theorem; that paper is not held and is known by attestation only, so it is not listed as the claimant's refereed publication either. Balogh and Wigal's correction reference [9] (p. 10) concerns the 1988 paper's exact ranges. The thread's second comment doubts the quantified restatement in the 2021 paper (the form with $\varepsilon k^2/n^2$); the claim recorded on this page uses only the first sentence of the attestation, with a fixed implied constant. Read depth: the attestation was read clause by clause; nothing of Győri's text, constants or range of nn was read, and nothing is independently reviewed by this project. The acceptance rests on the curator's credit, supported by the refereed attestation, and is to be rechecked against a readable copy of [Gy88] when one becomes available.

Formalization. The file src/latest/ErdosProblems/Erdos1009.lean of Boris Alexeev's repository plby/lean-proofs (2,373 lines at the pinned commit of 2026-09-15, linked above; first committed 17 August 2026; headed leanprover/lean4:v4.33.0 mathlib v4.33.0; it imports Mathlib modules and two sibling developments of the repository, ErdosProblems.Erdos207.Prefix and ErdosProblems.Erdos127.CutComposition) declares itself "a Lean formalization of a solution to Erdős Problem 1009" and names E. Győri as informal author and Codex and GPT-5.6 Sol as formal authors. Its theorem erdos_1009 (line 2347) states: for every real c>0c>0 there is a natural ff such that for all nn, kk and every SimpleGraph (Fin n) with at least n2/4+kn^2/4+k edges and k<cnk<cn, there is a family PP of triangles of the graph, pairwise edge-disjoint in the file's encoding (TriangleFamilyOn, IsTrianglePacking), with k≤∣P∣+fk\le|P|+f; its docstring gives the explicit choice f=210000 C2f=210000\,C^2 for any natural C>cC>c. The file has no sorry, axiom or native_decide. The formal-conjectures statement of the problem (added 19 September 2026, described on the problem page) names this line in its formal_proof attribute; its packings are finite sets of 33-cliques pairwise sharing at most one vertex, a different encoding, and the bridge between the two is in neither file. The file is not built, audited or kernel-checked in this corpus, and no outside examination of it is published, so the page lists no formalized evidence; the repository also carries an account of the proof (tex/1009.tex), which this page does not cover.