New upper bound for the Ramsey number of odd cycles

Abstract

The \emph{$k$-color Ramsey number} $R_k(C_{2\ell+1})$ is the least integer $n$ such that any $k$-edge-coloring of a complete graph $K_n$ has a monochromatic odd cycle $C_{2\ell+1}$. Axenovich, Cames van Batenburg, Janzer, Michel, and Rundström~(JCT-B, 2026) recently proved \[ R_k(C_{2\ell+1})\le (4\ell-2)^k k^{k/\ell}+1, \] and Miyazaki, Mulrenin, Pohoata, and Zheng further improved the factor $k^{k/\ell}$ to $(k!)^{1/\ell}$. As Jenssen and Skokan (AM, 2021) determined $R_k(C_{2\ell+1})$ for fixed $k$ and sufficiently large $\ell$, it becomes even more interesting to seek better bound for fixed $\ell$ and sufficiently large $k$. In this paper, we show \[ R_k(C_{2\ell+1}) \le \frac{2\ell}{2\ell-1}(2\ell-1)^k(k!)^{1/\ell} \exp\!\left(k^{1-1/\ell}+O_\ell\!\left(k^{1-2/\ell}+\log k\right)\right)+1 \] for every fixed $\ell\ge 2$ and sufficiently large $k$, which improves the bound of Miyazaki et al. by a factor $2^{k-o(k)}$, and the bound of Axenovich et al. by a factor $(2\e^{1/\ell})^{k-o(k)}$.