Dynamic concentration of the triangle-free process

Abstract

The triangle-free process begins with an empty graph on n vertices and iteratively adds edges chosen uniformly at random subject to the constraint that no triangle is formed. We determine the asymptotic number of edges in the maximal triangle-free graph at which the triangle-free process terminates. We also bound the independence number of this graph, which gives an improved lower bound on the Ramsey numbers R(3,t): we show R(3,t) > (1-o(1)) t^2 / (4 log t), which is within a 4+o(1) factor of the best known upper bound. Our improvement on previous analyses of this process exploits the self-correcting nature of key statistics of the process. Furthermore, we determine which bounded size subgraphs are likely to appear in the maximal triangle-free graph produced by the triangle-free process: they are precisely those triangle-free graphs with density at most 2.