Many cliques with few edges (Q2223482)

Summary: Recently \textit{J. Cutler} and \textit{A. J. Radcliffe} [``The maximum number of complete subgraphs in a graph with given maximum degree'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1306.1803}] proved that the graph on \(n\) vertices with maximum degree at most \(r\) having the most cliques is a disjoint union of \(\lfloor n/(r+1)\rfloor\) cliques of size \(r+1\) together with a clique on the remainder of the vertices. It is very natural also to consider this question when the limiting resource is edges rather than vertices. In this paper we prove that among graphs with \(m\) edges and maximum degree at most \(r\), the graph that has the most cliques of size at least two is the disjoint union of \(\bigl\lfloor m \bigm/\binom{r+1}{2} \bigr\rfloor\) cliques of size \(r+1\) together with the colex graph using the remainder of the edges.