Ramsey numbers and the Zarankiewicz problem

Abstract Building on recent work of Mattheus and Verstraëte, we establish a general connection between Ramsey numbers of the form for a fixed graph and a variant of the Zarankiewicz problem asking for the maximum number of 1s in an by ‐matrix that does not have any matrix from a fixed finite family derived from as a submatrix. As an application, we give new lower bounds for the Ramsey numbers and , namely, and . We also show how the truth of a plausible conjecture about Zarankiewicz numbers would allow an approximate determination of for any fixed integer .