Turán problems for mixed graphs

Abstract

We investigate natural Turán problems for mixed graphs, generalizations of graphs where edges can be either directed or undirected. We study a natural Turán density coefficient that measures how large a fraction of directed edges an F-free mixed graph can have; we establish an analogue of the Erdős-Stone-Simonovits theorem and give a variational characterization of the Turán density coefficient of any mixed graph (along with an associated extremal F-free family).

This characterization enables us to highlight an important divergence between classical extremal numbers and the Turán density coefficient. We show that Turán density coefficients can be irrational, but are always algebraic; for every positive integer k, we construct a family of mixed graphs whose Turán density coefficient has algebraic degree k.