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

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Claim. Let TT be a tree on n≥2n\ge2 vertices and k≥1k\ge1. Then

Rk(T)≤k(n−2)+2,R_k(T)\le k(n-2)+2,

and Rk(T)≤k(n−2)+1R_k(T)\le k(n-2)+1 when nn is odd and kk is even. So Rk(T)≤kn+O(1)R_k(T)\le kn+O(1) for every tree TT on nn vertices, uniformly in TT, and the answer is yes; the single-vertex tree has Rk(K1)=1R_k(K_1)=1 and is no exception. The input is the sharp tree-free edge bound proved for Problem 548: a graph on NN vertices with no copy of TT has at most (n−2)N/2(n-2)N/2 edges. In a kk-coloring of the edges of KNK_N with N=k(n−2)+2N=k(n-2)+2 and no monochromatic TT, summing the bound over the kk color classes gives N(N−1)≤k(n−2)NN(N-1)\le k(n-2)N, that is N−1≤k(n−2)N-1\le k(n-2), which contradicts the choice of NN; the parity case uses that each color class has an even number of edge-ends while (n−2)N(n-2)N is odd. The deduction is written out on the library's tree Ramsey corollary page from Theorem 1 of the source card.

Claimant and postings. The claimant is Tom Adamczewski, the name the publication carries: the proof repository the site's proof claim links, pinned above, is Adamczewski's, and the FrontierMath Erdős paper of Adamczewski and Bloom (arXiv:2609.25050, v1 6 September 2026) and Epoch AI's report, linked above, record the resolution. The proof of Problem 548 was found by GPT-6 Astra, which the site's proof-claim entry names as its claimant and describes as a pre-release version of GPT-6 Astra run by Epoch AI; the entry's summary says the proof was formalized in that run and is short and elementary. The entry itself was submitted on the site's proof-claim tab for Problem 548 by the site's curator, T. F. Bloom, on 3 September 2026, the date this page is named by, with the five-page exposition generated from the formal proof, linked above. The site's commentary on this problem, edited on 2 September 2026, already stated that a positive answer follows from the proof of Problem 548; its edit of 7 September 2026 replaced that sentence by a credit to Reed and Stein's dense case of the Erdős--Sós conjecture, an independent proof of the large-nn bound k(n−2)+3k(n-2)+3 recorded on its own page Reed and Stein 2026. The corollary is not a numbered result of the exposition or a target of the repository's formal comparison: the site's problem page states the implication, the site's discussion of 4 September 2026 states the parity refinement and names stars as the extremal trees, and this corpus wrote the deduction. A comment of 17 September 2026 in the same discussion, by Jun Zhang under the username zhangjun, announces Zhang's Lean 4 formalization of the deduction, pinned above, whose statements and proofs its README says were written with Claude (Anthropic) at Zhang's direction; it imports the Problem 548 repository as a dependency and declares itself a proof of this problem from that result, proving for every tree on n≥2n\ge2 vertices the bound k(n−2)+3k(n-2)+3 that Reed and Stein obtain for large nn, and, in its file Tight.lean, the strict form Rk(T)≤k(n−2)+2R_k(T)\le k(n-2)+2 that Reed and Stein state as Rk(T)<k(n−2)+3R_k(T)<k(n-2)+3, for every n≥2n\ge2, with the parity bound k(n−2)+1k(n-2)+1; it is a third party's formalization of this claim, not an independent proof, so it is a link on this page and not a page of its own. The same comment proposes a statement file to the formal-conjectures repository; a statement file is not a formalization and is not linked. The sharpness of the bound for stars is not part of this claim.

Depends on. Adamczewski 2026, the claim page of Problem 548, at the standing that page records; the deduction itself is the library corollary page linked above. Problem 548's Statement, that a graph on NN vertices with at least (n−2)N/2+1(n-2)N/2+1 edges contains every tree on nn vertices, gives the bound k(n−2)+2k(n-2)+2 by the count above: in a kk-coloring of KNK_N with N=k(n−2)+2N=k(n-2)+2 and n≥3n\ge3, the largest color class has at least N(N−1)/(2k)=(n−2)N/2+N/(2k)N(N-1)/(2k)=(n-2)N/2+N/(2k) edges, an integer exceeding (n−2)N/2+1/2(n-2)N/2+1/2 because N>kN>k, hence at least (n−2)N/2+1(n-2)N/2+1, and at n=2n=2 the tree is a single edge. The parity bound k(n−2)+1k(n-2)+1 needs the sharp form 2e(G)≤(n−2)N2e(G)\le(n-2)N for a graph GG on NN vertices with no copy of TT, which that page and the library's Theorem 1 page record and which the pinned Problem 548 development proves as its lemma tree_free_edge_bound, stated there but not a target of its comparison.

Acceptance. Formalized. This corpus's verification built the Lean 4 repository zhangjun725/erdos557 at the pinned commit 828ad6fd of 17 September 2026 (Lean v4.28.0, Mathlib v4.28.0), whose six commits all date from that day and which resolves the Problem 548 development tadamcz/erdos548 at its commit 82ffb751 of 6 September 2026, whose Lean files are identical to those of the commit 3766491b pinned above, the two differing only in the README, compiling that development's resolution module and the modules Erdos557.Basic, Erdos557.Erdos547 and Erdos557.Tight, and checked the axioms of Erdos557.erdos_557_explicit, Erdos557.erdos_557, Erdos557.erdos_557_tight and Erdos557.erdos_557_tight_odd; they are exactly propext, Classical.choice and Quot.sound. The repository has no comparator challenge, so no fingerprint comparison applies and the statements were audited directly, clause by clause against the problem's Statement. multicolourRamsey k G is the infimum of the mm such that every labeling of the edges of KmK_m by kk colors (Mathlib's TopEdgeLabeling (Fin m) (Fin k), every map from the edge set to kk colors) has a color class containing GG (IsContained, an injective homomorphism, so a copy that need not be induced); that is Rk(G)R_k(G), and on a tree the set is never empty, so the infimum takes no junk value. erdos_557_explicit says that for every kk, every nn and every tree TT on Fin n, every kk-labeling of Kk(n−2)+3K_{k(n-2)+3} has a color class containing TT, so Rk(T)≤k(n−2)+3≤kn+3R_k(T)\le k(n-2)+3\le kn+3 with one absolute constant, which answers the question yes under either reading of the O(1)O(1), uniform in kk or depending on it; erdos_557 is the form ∃c\exists c with Rk(T)≤kn+cR_k(T)\le kn+c for all kk, nn and TT, its corollary through Nat.sInf_le, and the explicit form is the evidence because the infimum form alone would also hold on an empty set. At n=1n=1 natural-number subtraction truncates n−2n-2 to 00, so the explicit theorem gives only Rk(K1)≤3R_k(K_1)\le3, true and not this page's claim, whose bounds are stated for n≥2n\ge2, where nothing truncates. erdos_557_tight states the claim's bound: for every kk, every n≥2n\ge2 and every tree TT on nn vertices, every kk-labeling of Kk(n−2)+2K_{k(n-2)+2} has a color class containing TT, vacuously at k=0k=0, since K2K_2 has an edge and no labeling by zero colors, so the page's k≥1k\ge1 is its content; erdos_557_tight_odd states the parity bound: for even k>0k>0, odd n≥2n\ge2 and every tree TT on nn vertices, every kk-labeling of Kk(n−2)+1K_{k(n-2)+1} has a color class containing TT, where k>0k>0 is needed, since R0(T)=2R_0(T)=2. The bound k(n−2)+2k(n-2)+2 is the strict form Rk(T)<k(n−2)+3R_k(T)<k(n-2)+3 of Reed and Stein's Corollary 4, here for every n≥2n\ge2 rather than for large nn. The explicit bound k(n−2)+3k(n-2)+3 is deduced from Erdos548.erdos_548, whose statement in the imported resolution module is identical to the Problem 548 repository's comparator challenge; the two sharp bounds are deduced from that development's internal lemma tree_free_edge_bound, 2e(G)≤(n−2)N2e(G)\le(n-2)N for a TT-free graph GG on N>0N>0 vertices, which the Problem 548 comparator does not compare, so its soundness rests on the axiom check alone. The repository's four Lean files contain no sorry, axiom, instance, notation, macro, attribute, set_option or variable declaration, its README's displayed statements match the source, and the imported module adds nothing that changes how the statements elaborate. The machine-checked derivation is Jun Zhang's, written with Claude (Anthropic) as its README says and announced in the problem's discussion on 17 September 2026; only its input theorem is the GPT-6 Astra proof published in Adamczewski's repository; the repository reports its own build and axiom check, so this corpus's build is the first independent check of it. Not reviewed: the site's label of 2 September 2026, PROVED (FORMALIZED), rested on the proof of Problem 548, and the community database lists the problem as proved (Lean) with last update 3 September 2026, but the curator's commentary of 7 September 2026 credits Reed and Stein's theorem instead and no longer mentions this proof, and the curator's earlier credit was in any case not independent: Bloom submitted the site's proof claim and is a co-author of the FrontierMath Erdős paper; this corpus's own six-page proof chain, corollary included, passed the fresh proof-chain review of 2026-09-18 whose records the source card lists, the project's own review, which awards no acceptance. Not refereed: the exposition is a preliminary account that the proof-claim note of 3 September 2026 calls a placeholder pending a proper write-up and an assessment of the ideas' relation to earlier work, and the FrontierMath Erdős paper is a preprint. At k=2k=2 the claim is the statement of Problem 547, accepted on the same build.

Read depth. The five pages of the exposition were read and reconstructed on the card's proof pages; the deduction to this problem is elementary and checked here in full; the Lean source was read at its principal definitions, count inequalities and final statement; of the third-party formalization, the README and the four Lean files were read for their declarations, the statements of the cited theorems were audited clause by clause, and the proofs were compiled and axiom-checked here rather than read line by line.