Edge mappings of graphs: Tur\'an type parameters

Abstract

In this paper, we address problems related to parameters concerning edge mappings of graphs. The quantity $h(n,G)$ is defined to be the maximum number of edges in an $n$-vertex graph $H$ such that there exists a mapping $f: E(H)\rightarrow E(H)$ with $f(e)\neq e$ for all $e\in E$ and further in all copies $G'$ of $G$ in $H$ there exists $e\in E(G')$ with $f(e)\in E(G')$. Among other results, we determine $h(n, G)$ when $G$ is a matching and $n$ is large enough. As a related concept, we say that $H$ is unavoidable for $G$ if for any mapping $f: E(H)\rightarrow E(H)$ with $f(e)\neq e$ there exists a copy $G'$ of $G$ in $H$ such that $f(e)\notin E(G')$ for all $e\in E(G)$. The set of minimal unavoidable graphs for $G$ is denoted by $\mathcal{M}(G)$. We prove that if $F$ is a forest, then $\mathcal{M}(F)$ is finite if and only if $F$ is a matching, and we conjecture that for all non-forest graphs $G$, the set $\mathcal{M}(G)$ is infinite. Several other parameters are defined with basic results proved. Lots of open problems remain.