Cycle lengths in expanding graphs

Abstract

For a positive constant $\alpha$ a graph $G$ on $n$ vertices is called an $\alpha$-expander if every vertex set $U$ of size at most $n/2$ has an external neighborhood whose size is at least $\alpha\left|U\right|$. We study cycle lengths in expanding graphs. We first prove that cycle lengths in $\alpha$-expanders are well distributed. Specifically, we show that for every $0<\alpha\leq1$ there exist positive constants $n_{0}$, $C$ and $A=O(1/\alpha)$ such that for every $\alpha$-expander $G$ on $n\geq n_{0}$ vertices and every integer $\ell\in\left[C\log n,\frac{n}{C}\right]$, $G$ contains a cycle whose length is between $\ell$ and $\ell+A$; the order of dependence of the additive error term $A$ on $\alpha$ is optimal. Secondly, we show that every $\alpha$-expander on $n$ vertices contains $\Omega\left(\frac{\alpha^{3}}{\log\left(1/\alpha\right)}\right)n$ different cycle lengths. Finally, we introduce another expansion-type property, guaranteeing the existence of a linearly long interval in the set of cycle lengths. For $\beta>0$ a graph $G$ on $n$ vertices is called a $\beta$-graph if every pair of disjoint sets of size at least $\beta n$ are connected by an edge. We prove that for every $\beta <1/20$ there exist positive constants $b_{1}=O\left(\frac{1}{\log\left(1/\beta\right)}\right)$ and $b_{2}=O\left(\beta\right)$ such that every $\beta$-graph $G$ on $n$ vertices contains a cycle of length $\ell$ for every integer $\ell\in\left[b_{1}\log n,(1-b_{2})n\right]$; the order of dependence of $b_{1}$ and $b_{2}$ on $\beta$ is optimal.