The Outerplanar Turán Number of Double Stars

Abstract

Let $H$ be a nonempty graph. A graph is $H$-free if it does not contain any copy of $H$ as a subgraph. The outerplanar Turán number of $H$, denoted by $ex_{_\mathcal{OP}}(n,H)$, is the maximum number of edges among all $H$-free outerplanar graphs on $n$ vertices. A double star $S_{p,q}$ is the graph obtained from an edge by joining its two endpoints with $p$ and $q$ isolated vertices respectively, where $q \ge p\ge 1$. In this paper, we determine the exact values of $ex_{_\mathcal{OP}}(n,S_{p,q})$ for all $q\ge p\ge 2$, with the sole exception of $p=2$ and $q=3$; for the latter, we establish a lower bound.