Powers of Hamilton cycles of high discrepancy are unavoidable (Q2161210)

Summary: The Pósa-Seymour conjecture asserts that every graph on \(n\) vertices with minimum degree at least \((1-1/(r +1)) n\) contains the \(r^{th}\) power of a Hamilton cycle. \textit{J. Komlós} et al. famously proved the conjecture for large \(n\) [Combinatorica 17, No. 1, 109--123 (1997; Zbl 0880.05049)]. The notion of discrepancy appears in many areas of mathematics, including graph theory. In this setting, a graph \(G\) is given along with a 2-coloring of its edges. One is then asked to find in \(G\) a copy of a given subgraph with a large discrepancy, i.e., with significantly more than half of its edges in one color. For \(r \geqslant 2\), we determine the minimum degree threshold needed to find the \(r^{th}\) power of a Hamilton cycle of large discrepancy, answering a question posed by \textit{J. Balogh} et al. [Comb. Probab. Comput. 30, No. 3, 444--459 (2021; Zbl 1466.05174)]. Notably, for \(r \geqslant 3\), this threshold approximately matches the minimum degree requirement of the Pósa-Seymour conjecture.