The minimum degree removal lemma thresholds

Abstract

The graph removal lemma is a fundamental result in extremal graph theory which says that for every fixed graph H and ε>0, if an n-vertex graph G contains εn2 edge-disjoint copies of H then G contains δnv(H) copies of H for some δ=δ(ε,H)>0. The current proofs of the removal lemma give only very weak bounds on δ(ε,H), and it is also known that δ(ε,H) is not polynomial in ε unless H is bipartite. Recently, Fox and Wigderson initiated the study of minimum degree conditions guaranteeing that δ(ε,H) depends polynomially or linearly on ε. In this paper we answer several questions of Fox and Wigderson on this topic.