Saturation numbers for families of graph subdivisions

For a family of graphs, a graph G is ‐saturated if G contains no member of as a subgraph, but for any edge in , contains some member of as a subgraph. The minimum number of edges in an ‐saturated graph of order n is denoted . A subdivision of a graph H, or an H‐subdivision, is a graph G obtained from H by replacing the edges of H with internally disjoint paths of arbitrary length. We let denote the family of H‐subdivisions, including H itself. In this paper, we study when H is one of or , obtaining several exact results and bounds. In particular, we determine exactly for and show for n sufficiently large that there exists a constant such that . For we show that will suffice, and that this can be improved slightly depending on the value of . We also give an upper bound on for all t and show that . This provides an interesting contrast to a 1937 result of Wagner (Math Ann, 114 (1937), 570–590), who showed that edge‐maximal graphs without a K₅‐minor have at least edges.