# Degree, distance and graph connectedness.

(1) If degree of every node in an $n$-vertex graph is at least $n/2$ then is the graph always connected?

Can we reduce $n/2$?

(2) Suppose distance between a particular two nodes is $>n/2$ does that mean there is a node which when removed disconnects the graph? How to find this node?

Can we reduce $n/2$ here?

• For the second question, an idea : any two paths from $u$ to $v$ (the particular nodes) have length $>n/2$, so they must intersect at some point (the case where there's only one path being obvious) – Max Jan 27 '17 at 22:02

OUTLINE

Suppose graph is disconnected, then there are at least 2 components, and in the one that has the smaller number of vertices, the degree cannot exceed $n/2$, which is a contradiction to your min degree.

Can you construct a graph that demonstrates this bound is sharp?

For a constructive proof on (1):

First consider a node $v$ that has degree $\ge n/2$. Then call $W$ the set of nodes that are not directly connected to $v$ noting that $|W|\le n-n/2-1 = n/2-1$. Then consider any node $w \in W$ and note that it must be connected to some node outside $W$, i.e some node that is connected to $v$. Thus the graph is connected.

We can reduce the minimum degree value here to $\ge \lfloor n/2\rfloor$, but smaller values allow the separation of the graph into two complete graphs each with half the nodes.

For question (2) a path length of $>n/2$ between chosen nodes $u$ and $v$ indicates that there is a node on that path that can be removed to break the path and hence disconnect the graph, but I can't quite put the argument together with the rigor I would like.

Certainly though the limit cannot be much reduced as the cycle graph with even nodes has $2$ paths of length $n/2$ between any two points, so there is no single node can be removed to disconnect the graph.