Edge-Disjoint Induced Subgraphs with Given Minimum Degree

Abstract

Let $h$ be a given positive integer. For a graph with $n$ vertices and $m$ edges, what is the maximum number of pairwise edge-disjoint {\em induced} subgraphs, each having  minimum degree at least $h$? There are examples for which this number is $O(m^2/n^2)$. We prove that this bound is achievable for all graphs with polynomially many edges. For all $\epsilon > 0$, if $m \ge n^{1+\epsilon}$, then there are always $\Omega(m^2/n^2)$ pairwise edge-disjoint induced subgraphs, each having  minimum degree at least $h$. Furthermore, any two subgraphs intersect in an independent set of size at most $1+ O(n^3/m^2)$, which is shown to be asymptotically optimal.