Prescribed-order subdigraphs with large minimum out-degree

Abstract

Alon introduced $d(s)$ as the largest integer $d$ such that every digraph on $2n$ vertices with minimum out-degree at least $s$ contains a subdigraph on $n$ vertices with minimum out-degree at least $d$. He proved that $s/2-d(s)=O(\sqrt{s\log s})$, and further asked whether this deficit can be bounded by an absolute constant. Steiner answered this question in the negative by constructing suitable tournaments, and showed that $s/2-d(s)=Ω(\log s)$. Using a different construction, we show that the deficit grows at least on the square-root scale, rather than merely logarithmically, improving the best known lower bound due to Steiner from $Ω(\log s)$ to $Ω(\sqrt{s})$ and leaving only a factor of $\sqrt{\log s}$ between the lower and upper bounds. This also completely settles a question raised by Steiner for tournament hosts. More generally, in the broader setting considered by Alon, our construction applies whenever the prescribed subdigraphs contain any fixed positive proportion of the vertices of the host digraph rather than specifically one half.