Upper tails for triangles

Bobby DeMarco, Jeff Kahn

Published 2010-05-25, updated 2011-11-29Version 2

With $\xi$ the number of triangles in the usual (Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi) random graph $G(m,p)$, $p>1/m$ and $\eta>0$, we show (for some $C_{\eta}>0$) $$\Pr(\xi> (1+\eta)\E \xi) < \exp[-C_{\eta}\min{m^2p^2\log(1/p),m^3p^3}].$$ This is tight up to the value of $C_{\eta}$.