Long paths and cycles in random subgraphs of graphs with large minimum degree

Michael Krivelevich, Choongbum Lee, Benny Sudakov

Published 2012-07-02, updated 2013-05-25Version 3

For a given finite graph $G$ of minimum degree at least $k$, let $G_{p}$ be a random subgraph of $G$ obtained by taking each edge independently with probability $p$. We prove that (i) if $p \ge \omega/k$ for a function $\omega=\omega(k)$ that tends to infinity as $k$ does, then $G_p$ asymptotically almost surely contains a cycle (and thus a path) of length at least $(1-o(1))k$, and (ii) if $p \ge (1+o(1))\ln k/k$, then $G_p$ asymptotically almost surely contains a path of length at least $k$. Our theorems extend classical results on paths and cycles in the binomial random graph, obtained by taking $G$ to be the complete graph on $k+1$ vertices.