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Research notes on every problem, and a library of the papers behind them. Built from the open erdos repository.

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Hanson and Seyffarth, kk-saturated graphs of prescribed maximum degree, Congressus Numerantium (1984); the page's reference [HaSe84] gives pp. 169--182, Füredi and Seress cite volume 42, pp. 169--182, and Haviv and Levy cite volume 44, pp. 127--138. The account below rests on the site's commentary and on the two papers that build on it. The page name carries the publication year; the day is not recorded in any source read.

The result. A subset SS of an abelian group GG is symmetric when S=−SS=-S, sum-free when no a,b,c∈Sa,b,c\in S satisfy a+b=ca+b=c, and complete when every element of G∖(S∪{0})G\setminus(S\cup\{0\}) is a sum of two elements of SS. Hanson and Seyffarth observed that the Cayley graph of GG with connection set SS is then an ∣S∣|S|-regular triangle-free graph of diameter 22 on ∣G∣|G| vertices (the observation Haviv and Levy attribute to them in Section 1 of [HaLe18]); Haviv and Levy remark there, in their own words, that completeness forces ∣S∣≥2∣G∣−O(1)|S|\ge\sqrt{2|G|}-O(1). Hanson and Seyffarth constructed such sets in cyclic groups Zn\mathbb Z_n for n=m2+5m+2n=m^2+5m+2 (the range Haviv and Levy state for the result) of size O(n)O(\sqrt n), so that f(n)=O(n)f(n)=O(\sqrt n) along this sequence. The site's commentary records the bound as f(n)≤(2+o(1))nf(n)\le(\sqrt2+o(1))\sqrt n; Füredi and Seress (Section 6 of [FuSe94]) report it as (2+o(1))n(2+o(1))\sqrt n, and the remark in the 2 July 2024 version of Alon's note, also cited on Problem 134, gives f(n)≤2nf(n)\le2\sqrt n and adds that a Cayley graph of an abelian group cannot have maximum degree below (2+o(1))n(\sqrt2+o(1))\sqrt n, the lower limit the site's constant matches; the constant is not checked here.

Covers. The second question: f(n)/nf(n)/\sqrt n does not tend to infinity, because f(n)≤Cnf(n)\le C\sqrt n for infinitely many nn while the trivial bound f(n)≥n−1f(n)\ge\sqrt{n-1} holds for every nn. The sources differ on the range of the bound: the site, Füredi and Seress and the remark in Alon's note state it for all large nn, while Haviv and Levy state it, for the symmetric complete sum-free sets in Zn\mathbb Z_n, along n=m2+5m+2n=m^2+5m+2. This page records the narrower range and does not claim the order of growth for every nn, although the sequence has consecutive ratios tending to 11 and duplicating vertices (which keeps a graph triangle-free of diameter 22 and at most doubles its maximum degree) carries a bound along it to every large nn, the step the Lean development below takes. The order of growth for every nn is recorded under the two refereed full claims, Füredi and Seress and Haviv and Levy.

Depends on. Nothing in this wiki; the construction is self-contained.

Formalization. The file src/latest/ErdosProblems/Erdos133.lean of Boris Alexeev's repository plby/lean-proofs, first committed on 2026-08-17 and linked above at a commit of 2026-09-15, declares itself a Lean formalization of a solution to Problem 133 and names David Hanson and Kathy Seyffarth as informal authors and Codex and GPT-5.6 Sol as formal authors. It defines f(n)f(n) as the least maximum degree and proves, as erdos_133, that n−1≤f(n)≤4n\sqrt n-1\le f(n)\le4\sqrt n for every n≥64n\ge64, that f(n)=Θ(n)f(n)=\Theta(\sqrt n) and that f(n)/nf(n)/\sqrt n does not tend to infinity; the upper bound uses an explicit graph on the pairs of elements of a finite set with a fixed-point-free involution, followed by vertex duplication, rather than Hanson and Seyffarth's Cayley graphs, and the file ends with #print axioms erdos_133. The formal-conjectures statement file of the problem points to this declaration as its formal proof (see the problem page). The corpus has not built, kernel-checked or audited the file, so the evidence stays reviewed only.

Acceptance. The site's curator, Thomas Bloom, marks the problem DISPROVED and credits the bound to Hanson and Seyffarth under the reference [HaSe84] in the commentary; that credit is the reviewed evidence, and Bloom took no part in the paper. The conjecture f(n)/n→∞f(n)/\sqrt n\to\infty that the bound refutes is Erdős and Pach's as [Er97b] words it. Two refereed papers restate the result as established: Füredi and Seress (J. Graph Theory 18 (1994), Section 6) write that Hanson and Seyffarth determined the true order of magnitude, and Haviv and Levy (Israel J. Math. 227 (2018), Section 1) extend it to every nn. These are documented acceptances by named experts; whether Congressus Numerantium refereed the paper is not documented here, so refereed is not listed.