An extremal problem on potentially $K_{m}-P_{k}$-graphic sequences

Abstract

A sequence $S$ is potentially $K_{m}-P_{k}$ graphical if it has a realization containing a $K_{m}-P_{k}$ as a subgraph. Let $σ(K_{m}-P_{k}, n)$ denote the smallest degree sum such that every $n$-term graphical sequence $S$ with $σ(S)\geq σ(K_{m}-P_{k}, n)$ is potentially $K_{m}-P_{k}$ graphical. In this paper, we prove that $σ(K_{m}-P_{k}, n)\geq (2m-6)n-(m-3)(m-2)+2,$ for $n \geq m \geq k+1\geq 4.$ We conjecture that equality holds for $n \geq m \geq k+1\geq 4.$ We prove that this conjecture is true for $m=k+1=5$ and $m=k+2=5$.