Large induced subgraphs with prescribed degree parity

Abstract

A long-standing conjecture of Caro (Discrete Math, 1994), confirmed by Ferber and Krivelevich (Adv Math, 2022), states that every $n$-vertex graph $G$ without isolated vertices contains an induced subgraph of order linear in $n$ in which every vertex has odd degree. We generalize this result to graphs $G$ whose vertices are labeled by $\ell: V(G)\to \{0,1\}$. We require, in an induced subgraph, all $0$-labeled vertices to have even degree and all $1$-labeled vertices to have odd degree. Let $h_{\ell}(G)$ denote the maximum order of such a subgraph. Let $f_{oe}(G)=\min_{\ell} h_{\ell}(G)$ be the worst-labeling parameter. We establish a pointwise lower bound for $h_{\ell}(G)$ that immediately yields a linear lower bound in $|V(G)|$ for $f_{oe}(G)$, where $G$ has no isolated vertices. For an $n$-vertex connected graph, we obtain a sharp lower bound for $f_{oe}(G)$: $f_{oe}(G)\ge \lceil (n-1)/χ_{mm}{(G)} \rceil ,$ where $χ_{mm}{(G)}$ is the maximum chromatic number of a minor of $G.$ Using proved cases of Hadwiger's Conjecture, we show that for $t\in \{3,4,5,6\}$, if an $n$-vertex connected graph $G$ is $K_t$-minor-free, then $f_{oe}(G)\ge \lceil (n-1)/(t-1)\rceil$ and this bound is sharp for each $t\in \{3,4,5,6\}$. Finally, we conjecture that $f_{oe}(G)\ge f_o(G)/2$ for all graphs $G$ and confirm the conjecture for all trees and complete multipartite graphs.