The extremal number of longer subdivisions

Abstract

For a multigraph $F$, the $k$-subdivision of $F$ is the graph obtained by replacing the edges of $F$ with pairwise internally vertex-disjoint paths of length $k+1$. Conlon and Lee conjectured that if $k$ is even, then the $(k-1)$-subdivision of any multigraph has extremal number $O(n^{1+\frac{1}{k}})$, and moreover, that for any simple graph $F$ there exists $\varepsilon>0$ such that the $(k-1)$-subdivision of $F$ has extremal number $O(n^{1+\frac{1}{k}-\varepsilon})$. In this paper, we prove both conjectures.