The Turán number of the square of a path

Abstract: The Tur\'an number of a graph H, ex(n,H), is the maximum number of edges in a graph on n vertices which does not have H as a subgraph. Let P_k be the path with k vertices, the square P^2_k of P_k is obtained by joining the pairs of vertices with distance one or two in P_k. The powerful theorem of Erd\H{o}s, Stone and Simonovits determines the asymptotic behavior of ex(n,P^2_k). In the present paper, we determine the exact value of ex(n,P^2_5) and ex(n,P^2_6) and pose a conjecture for the exact value of ex(n,P^2_k).