(1) Department of Mathematics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
Abstract:
We show that every K4-free graph G with n vertices can be made bipartite by deleting at most n2/9 edges. Moreover, the only extremal graph which requires deletion of that many edges is a complete 3-partite graph with parts of size n/3. This proves an old conjecture of P. Erdős. Research supported in part by NSF CAREER award DMS-0546523, NSF grant DMS-0355497, USA-Israeli BSF grant, and by an Alfred P. Sloan fellowship.