On two cycles of consecutive even lengths

Abstract: Bondy and Vince showed that every graph with minimum degree at least three contains two cycles of lengths differing by one or two.We prove the following average degree counterpart that every $n$-vertex graph $G$ with at least $\frac52(n-1)$ edges, unless $4|(n-1)$ and every block of $G$ is a clique $K_5$, contains two cycles of consecutive even lengths. Our proof is mainly based on structural analysis, and a crucial step which may be of independent interest shows that the same conclusion holds for every 3-connected graph with at least 6 vertices. This solves a special case of a conjecture of Verstra\"ete. The quantitative bound is tight and also provides the optimal extremal number for cycles of length two modulo four.