Turán Problems for Edge-Ordered Graphs

In this paper we initiate a systematic study of the Turán problem for edge-ordered graphs. A simple graph is called edge-ordered if its edges are linearly ordered. This notion allows us to study graphs (and in particular their maximum number of edges) when a subgraph is forbidden with a specific edge-order but the same underlying graph may appear with a different edge-order. We prove an Erdős-Stone-Simonovits-type theorem for edge-ordered graphs—we identify the relevant parameter for the Turán number of an edge-ordered graph and call it the order chromatic number . We establish several important properties of this parameter. We also study Turán numbers of edge-ordered paths, star forests and the cycle of length four. We make strong connections to Davenport-Schinzel theory, the theory of forbidden submatrices, and show an application in discrete geometry.