Fan-goodness of sparse graphs

Abstract

Let $G$ be a connected graph of order $n$, $F_k$ be a fan consisting of $k$ triangles sharing a common vertex, and $tF_k$ be $t$ vertex-disjoint copies of $F_k$. Brennan (2017) showed the Ramsey number $r(G,F_k)=2n-1$ for $G$ being a unicyclic graph for $n \geq k^2-k+1$ and $k\ge 18$, and asked the threshold $c(n)$ for which $r(G,F_k) \geq 2n$ holds for any $G$ containing at least $c(n)$ cycles and $n$ being large. In this paper, we consider fan-goodness of general sparse graphs and show that if $G$ has at most $n(1+\epsilon(k))$ edges, where $\epsilon(k)$ is a constant depending on $k$, then $$r(G,F_k)=2n-1$$ for $n\ge 36k^4$, which implies that $c(n)$ is greater than $\epsilon(k) n$. Moreover, if $G$ has at most $n(1+\epsilon(k,t))$ edges, where $\epsilon(k,t)$ is a constant depending on $k,t$, then $$r(G,tF_k)=2n+t-2$$ provided $n\ge 161t^2k^4$.