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Powers of Hamilton cycles in pseudorandom graphs

We study the appearance of powers of Hamilton cycles in pseudorandom graphs, using the following comparatively weak pseudorandomness notion. A graph $G$ is $(\varepsilon,p,k,\ell)$-pseudorandom if for all disjoint $X$ and $Y\subset V(G)$ with $|X|\ge\varepsilon p^kn$ and $|Y|\ge\varepsilon p^\ell n$ we have $e(X,Y)=(1\pm\varepsilon)p|X||Y|$. We prove that for all $β>0$ there is an $\varepsilon>0$ such that an $(\varepsilon,p,1,2)$-pseudorandom graph on $n$ vertices with minimum degree at least $βpn$ contains the square of a Hamilton cycle. In particular, this implies that $(n,d,λ)$-graphs with $λ\ll d^{5/2 }n^{-3/2}$ contain the square of a Hamilton cycle, and thus a triangle factor if $n$ is a multiple of $3$. This improves on a result of Krivelevich, Sudakov and Szabó [Triangle factors in sparse pseudo-random graphs, Combinatorica 24 (2004), no. 3, 403--426]. We also extend our result to higher powers of Hamilton cycles and establish corresponding counting versions.