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Combinatorics Difficulty 6.4 National olympiad Prove it Bulgaria

A graph GG is called divisibility graph if the vertices can be assigned distinct positive integers such that between two vertices assigned u,vu, v there is an edge iff uv\frac{u}{v} or vu\frac{v}{u} is a positive integer. Show that for any positive integer nn and 0en(n1)20 \le e \le \frac{n(n-1)}{2}, there is a divisibility graph with nn vertices and ee edges.
(Danila Cherkashin)

Solution

We reason inductively on nn, not writing the number 11 at any vertex. For n=1n=1 the requested is clear, for n=2n=2 an example with e=1e=1 is (2,4)(2, 4) and an example with e=0e=0 is (2,3)(2, 3). For n=3n=3 example with e=0e=0 is 3,5,73, 5, 7, example with e=1e=1 is 2,4,72, 4, 7, example with e=2e=2 is 2,4,102, 4, 10, an example with e=3e=3 is 2,4,82, 4, 8.
For n4n \ge 4 we have n1(n1)(n2)2n-1 \le \frac{(n-1)(n-2)}{2}, so at least one of en1e \ge n-1 and e(n1)(n2)2e \le \frac{(n-1)(n-2)}{2} is satisfied.
Let en1e \ge n-1 first. In an example with n1n-1 vertices and e(n1)e - (n-1) edges, we add a vertex (of degree n1n-1) by writing in it a prime number pp greater than the numbers in the other vertices, then we multiply the numbers in the remaining vertices by pp – this does not spawn new edges between the remaining vertices.
Now let e(n1)(n2)2e \le \frac{(n-1)(n-2)}{2}. In an example with n1n-1 vertices and ee edges, we add a vertex (of degree 00), writing in it a prime number pp greater than the numbers in the other vertices, and do not change the numbers in the other vertices – it does not spawn new edges.

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