The bowtie extremal-orientation conjecture

Let B=F2,3B=F_{2,3} be the bowtie graph, with a distinguished center vertex. Let GG be a complete tripartite graph with part sizes 11, n12\left\lfloor\frac{n-1}{2}\right\rfloor, and n12\left\lceil\frac{n-1}{2}\right\rceil. Let B\vec{B} be an orientation of BB as in Case (a) or (b) of the proposition preceding this conjecture. The bowtie extremal-orientation conjecture. For every such orientation,

D(G,B)=D(n,B).D(G,\vec{B})=D(n,\vec{B}).

This conjecture identifies a complete tripartite graph as an extremal host for the specified unresolved orientations of the bowtie; the preceding proposition shows that these orientations have more than 2ex(n,B)2^{\mathrm{ex}(n,B)} orientations in general, while the exact value remains open.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Hannah Sheats, “Orientations of graphs omitting non-edge-critical directed graphs”, arXiv:2502.21287 (2025).

Progress summary

Never refreshed

Nothing recorded yet. Refresh searches the literature and the public web for attempts on this problem, and writes the first summary here.

Solutions 0

No solutions have been posted yet.