The $\mathcal{N}$ poset consists of four distinct sets $W,X,Y,Z$ such that $W\subset X$, $Y\subset X$, and $Y\subset Z$ where $W$ is not necessarily a subset of $Z$. A family $\mathcal{F}$ as a subposet of the $n$-dimensional Boolean lattice, $\mathcal{B}_n$, is $\mathcal{N}$-free if it does not contain $\mathcal{N}$ as a subposet. Let $\text{La}(n, \mathcal{N})$ be the size of a largest $\mathcal{N}$-free family in $\mathcal{B}_n$. Katona and Tarján proved that $\text{La}(n,\mathcal{N})\geq {n \choose k}+A(n,4,k+1)$, where $k=\lfloor n/2\rfloor$ and $A(n, 4, k+1)$ is the size of a single-error-correcting code with constant weight $k+1$. In this note, we prove for $n$ even and $k=n/2$, $\text{La}(n, \mathcal{N}) \geq {n\choose k}+A(n, 4, k)$, which improves the bound on $\text{La}(n, \mathcal{N})$ in the second order term for some values of $n$ and should be an improvement for an infinite family of values of $n$, depending on the behavior of the function $A(n,4,\cdot)$.
Let $n=2k+1$ be odd with $k\geq3$. In this note, we give two intersecting families with diversity larger than $\sum_{i=k+1}^{2k} \binom {2k}{i}$, which disprove a conjecture of Huang.
We construct an intersecting $k$-family of transversal size $\lceil \frac{k+1}{2} \rceil$ and length $k+1$ and study some of its properties. We use this family to prove that $q(4) = 9$. We also construct a $k$-family for $k = 2^m - 1$ of length $2k+1$ and transversal size at least $(2k+1)/3$.
For a family $\mathcal{F}$ of subsets of $\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$, let $\mathcal{D}(\mathcal{F}) = \{F\setminus G: F, G \in \mathcal{F}\}$ be the collection of all (setwise) differences of $\mathcal{F}$. The family $\mathcal{F}$ is called a $t$-intersecting family, if for some positive integer $t$ and any two members $F, G \in \mathcal{F}$ we have $|F\cap G| \geq t$. The family $\mathcal{F}$ is simply called intersecting if $t=1$. Recently, Frankl proved an upper bound on the size of $\mathcal{D}(\mathcal{F})$ for the intersecting families $\mathcal{F}$. In this note we extend the result of Frankl t…
Bernáth and Gerbner in 2007 introduced $(p,q)$-chain intersecting families of subsets of an $n$-element underlying set. Those have the property that for any $p$-chain $A_1\subsetneq A_2\subsetneq \dots \subsetneq A_p$ and $q$-chain $B_1\subsetneq B_2\subsetneq \dots \subsetneq B_q$, we have $A_p\cap B_q\neq \emptyset$. Bernáth and Gerbner determined the largest cardinality of such families. They also introduced strongly $(p,q)$-chain intersecting families, where $A_p\cap B_1\neq \emptyset$ and totally $(p,q)$-chain intersecting families, where $A_1\cap B_1\neq \emptyset$. They obtained some pa…
Paul Erdős and László Lovász established by means of an example that there exists a maximal intersecting family of $k-$sets with approximately $(e-1)k!$ blocks. László Lovász conjectured that their example is best known example which has the maximum number of blocks. Later it was disproved. But the quest for such examples remain valid till this date. In this short note, by computing transversal size of a certain series of uniform intersecting families constructed over the cycle graph, we provide an example which has more than $(\frac{k}{2})^{k-1}$ (approximately) blocks.
Let N((r,w;d),t) denote the minimum number of points in a (r,w;d)-cover-free family having t blocks. Hajiabolhassan and Moazami (2012)[6] showed that the Hadamard conjecture is equivalent to confirm N((1,1;d)4d-1)=4d-1. Hence, it is a challenging and interesting problem to determine the exact value of N((r,w;d),t). In this paper, we determine the exact value of N((r,w;d),t) for every r, w, where r+w<t+1 and some d.
A family of sets $\mathcal{F} \subseteq 2^{[n]}$ is defined to be $l$-trace $k$-Sperner if for any $l$-subset $L$ of $[n]$ the family of traces $\mathcal{F}|_L=\{F \cap L: F \in \mathcal{F}\}$ does not contain any chain of length $k+1$. In this paper we prove that for any positive integers $l',k$ with $l'<k$ if $\mathcal{F}$ is $(n-l')$-trace $k$-Sperner, then $|\mathcal{F}| \le (k-l'+o(1))\binom{n}{\lfloor n/2\rfloor}$ and this bound is asymptotically tight.
Consider a graph $G$ and a $k$-uniform hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$ on common vertex set $[n]$. We say that $\mathcal{H}$ is $G$-intersecting if for every pair of edges in $X,Y \in \mathcal{H}$ there are vertices $x \in X$ and $y \in Y$ such that $x = y$ or $x$ and $y$ are joined by an edge in $G$. This notion was introduced by Bohman, Frieze, Ruszinkó and Thoma who proved a natural generalization of the Erdős-Ko-Rado Theorem for $G$-intersecting $k$-uniform hypergraphs for $G$ sparse and $k = O( n^{1/4} )$. In this note, we extend this result to $k = O\left( \sqrt{n} \right)$.
A family $\mathcal{F}$ of subsets of $\{1,\dots,n\}$ is called $k$-wise intersecting if any $k$ members of $\mathcal{F}$ have non-empty intersection, and it is called maximal $k$-wise intersecting if no family strictly containing $\mathcal{F}$ satisfies this condition. We show that for each $k\geq 2$ there is a maximal $k$-wise intersecting family of size $O(2^{n/(k-1)})$. Up to a constant factor, this matches the best known lower bound, and answers an old question of Erdős and Kleitman, recently studied by Hendrey, Lund, Tompkins, and Tran.
The $t$-e.c. and pseudo-random property are typical properties of random graphs. In this note, we study the gap between them which has not been studied well. As a main result, we give the first explicit construction of infinite families of t-e.c. graphs which are not families of best possible pseudo-random graphs.
In an earlier work we described Gröbner bases of the ideal of polynomials over a field, which vanish on the set of characteristic vectors $\mathbf{v} \in \{0,1\}^n$ of the complete $d$ unifom set family over the ground set $[n]$. In particular, it turns out that the standard monomials of the above ideal are {\em ballot monomials}. We give here a partial extension of the latter fact. We prove that the lexicographic standard monomials for linear Sperner systems are also ballot monomials. A set family is a linear Sperner system if the characteristic vectors satisfy a linear equation $a_1v_1+\cdot…
Let $p$ and $q$ be two nonnegative integers with $p+q>0$ and $n>0$. We call $\mathcal{F} \subset \mathcal{P}([n])$ a \textit{(p,q)-tilted Sperner family with patterns on [n]} if there are no distinct $F,G \in \mathcal{F}$ with: $$(i) \ \ p|F \setminus G|=q|G \setminus F|, \ \textrm{and}$$ $$(ii) \ f > g \ \textrm{for all} \ f \in F \setminus G \ \textrm{and} \ g \in G \setminus F.$$ Long (\cite{L}) proved that the cardinality of a (1,2)-tilted Sperner family with patterns on $[n]$ is $$O(e^{120\sqrt{\log n}}\ \frac{2^n}{\sqrt{n}}).$$ We improve and generalize this result, and prove that the ca…
We give a simple argument showing that the number of edges in the intersection graph $G$ of a family of $n$ sets in the plane with a linear union-complexity is $O(ω(G)n)$. In particular, we prove $χ(G)\leq \text{col}(G)< 19ω(G)$ for intersection graph $G$ of a family of pseudo-discs, which improves a previous bound.
In this paper we introduce a set of sufficient criteria for the construction of relative hemisystems of the Hermitian space $\mathrm{H}(3,q^2)$, unifying all known infinite families. We use these conditions to provide new proofs of the existence of the known infinite families of relative hemisystems. Reproving these results has allowed us to find new relative hemisystems closely related to an infinite family of Cossidente's, and develop techniques that are likely to be useful in finding relative hemisystems in future.
In this note, we give a precise construction of one of the families of $2$-designs arose from studying flag-transitive $2$-designs with parameters $(v,k,λ)$ whose replication numbers $r$ are coprime to $λ$. We show that for a given positive integer $q=2^{2n+1}\geq 8$, there exists a $2$-design with parameters $(q^{2}+1,q,q-1)$ and the replication number $q^{2}$ admitting the Suzuki group $\textsf{Sz(q)}$ as its automorphism group. We also construct a family of $2$-designs with parameters $(q^{2}+1,q(q-1),(q-1)(q^{2}-q-1))$ and the replication number $q^{2}(q-1)$ admitting the Suzuki groups $\t…
Some new infinite families of simple, indecomposable $m$-factorizations of the complete multigraph $λK_v$ are presented. Most of the constructions come from finite geometries.
Cover-free families were considered from different subjects by numerous researchers. Recently, cover-free families are also found useful in cryptography. In this paper, we use an uniform method to survey known results of cover-free families. Many old results are updated or generalized. Some new results are also given.
New families of matroids are constructed in this note. These new fami- lies are derived from the concept of linearly independent set family (LISF) introduced by Eicker and Ewald [Linear Algebra and its Applications 388 (2004) 173-191]. The proposed construction generalizes in a natural way the well known class of vectorial matroids over a field.
The family of Directed Acyclic Graphs as well as some related graphs are analyzed with respect to extremal behavior in relation with the family of intersection graphs for families of boxes with transverse intersection.
Union-free families of subsets of $[n]=\{1,... n\}$ have been studied in \cite{FF}. In this paper, we provide a complete characterization of maximal {\it symmetric difference}-free families of subsets of $[n]$.
The Grundy number of a graph $G$ is the maximum number of colors used by the First-Fit coloring of $G$ and is denoted by $Γ(G)$. Similarly, the ${\rm b}$-chromatic number ${\rm{b}}(G)$ of $G$ expresses the worst case behavior of another well-known coloring procedure i.e. color-dominating coloring of $G$. We obtain some families of graphs $\mathcal{F}$ for which there exists a function $f(x)$ such that $Γ(G)\leq f({\rm{b}}(G))$, for each graph $G$ from the family. Call any such family $(Γ,b)$-bounded family. We conjecture that the family of ${\rm b}$-monotone graphs is $(Γ,b)$-bounded and valid…
Let \cal A be a family of subsets of an n-set such that \cal A does not contain distinct sets A and B with |A\B| = 2|B\A|. How large can \cal A be? Our aim in this note is to determine the maximum size of such an \cal A. This answers a question of Kalai. We also give some related results and conjectures.
Cover-free families are set systems used as solutions for a large variety of problems, and in particular, problems where we deal with $n$ elements and want to identify $d$ invalid ones among them by performing only $t$ tests ($t \leq n$). We are specially interested in cryptographic problems, and we note that some of these problems need cover-free families with an increasing size $n$. Solutions that propose the increase of $n$, such as \emph{monotone families} and \emph{nested families}, have been recently considered in the literature. In this paper, we propose a generalization that we call \e…
Let $\mathcal{A}_1,\ldots,\mathcal{A}_m$ be families of $k$-subsets of an $n$-set. Suppose that one cannot choose pairwise disjoint edges from $s+1$ distinct families. Subject to this condition we investigate the maximum of $|\mathcal{A}_1|+\ldots+|\mathcal{A}_m|$. Note that the subcase $m=s+1$, $\mathcal{A}_1=\ldots=\mathcal{A}_m$ is the Erdős Matching Conjecture, one of the most important open problems in extremal set theory. We provide some upper bounds, a general conjecture and its solution for the range $n\geq 4k^2s$.
Motivated by Stanley's conjecture about the $e$-positivity of claw-free incomparability graphs, Hamel and her collaborators studied the $e$-positivity of $(claw, H)$-free graphs, where $H$ is a four-vertex graph. In this paper we establish the $e$-positivity of generalized pyramid graphs and $2K_2$-free unit interval graphs, which are two important families of $(claw, 2K_2)$-free graphs. Hence we affirmatively solve one problem proposed by Hamel, Hoàng and Tuero, and another problem considered by Foley, Hoàng and Merkel.
We prove that the largest $Q_2$-free family of subsets of $[n]$ which contains sets of at most three different sizes has at most $(3 + 2\sqrt {3})N/3 + o(N) \approx 2.1547N + o(N)$ members, where $N = {n \choose {\lfloor n/2 \rfloor}}$. This improves an earlier bound of $2.207N + o(N)$ by Axenovich, Manske, and Martin.
This paper discusses the question of how many non-empty subsets of the set $[n] = \{ 1, 2, ..., n\}$ we can choose so that no chosen subset is the union of some other chosen subsets. Let $M(n)$ be the maximum number of subsets we can choose. We construct a series of such families, which leads to lower bounds on $M(n)$. We also give upper bounds on $M(n)$. Finally, we propose several conjectures on the tightness of our lower bound for $M(n)$.
In this note, we describe a construction that leads to families of graphs whose critical groups are cyclic. For some of these families we are able to give a formula for the number of spanning trees of the graph, which then determines the group exactly. We also pose several open questions related to this work.
The crown $\Oh_{2t}$ is a height-2 poset whose Hasse diagram is a cycle of length $2t$. A family $\F$ of subsets of $[n]:=\{1,2..., n\}$ is {\em $\Oh_{2t}$-free} if $\Oh_{2t}$ is not a weak subposet of $(\F,\subseteq)$. Let $\La(n,\Oh_{2t})$ be the largest size of $\Oh_{2t}$-free families of subsets of $[n]$. De Bonis-Katona-Swanepoel proved $\La(n,\Oh_{4})= {n\choose \lfloor \frac{n}{2} \rfloor} + {n\choose \lceil \frac{n}{2} \rceil}$. Griggs and Lu proved that $\La(n,\Oh_{2t})=(1+o(1))\nchn$ for all even $t\ge 4$. In this paper, we prove $\La(n,\Oh_{2t})=(1+o(1))\nchn$ for all odd $t\geq 7$.
A family of graphs $\mathcal{F}$ is hereditary if $\mathcal{F}$ is closed under isomorphism and taking induced subgraphs. The speed of $\mathcal{F}$ is the sequence $\{|\mathcal{F}^n|\}_{n \in \mathbb{N}}$, where $\mathcal{F}^n$ denotes the set of graphs in $\mathcal{F}$ with the vertex set $[n]$. Alon, Balogh, Bollobás and Morris [The structure of almost all graphs in a hereditary property, JCTB 2011] gave a rough description of typical graphs in a hereditary family and used it to show for every proper hereditary family $\mathcal{F}$ there exist $\varepsilon>0$ and an integer $l \geq 1$ such …
A family of sets is union-free if there are no three distinct sets in the family such that the union of two of the sets is equal to the third set. Kleitman proved that every union-free family has size at most $(1+o(1))\binom{n}{n/2}$. Later, Burosch--Demetrovics-Katona-Kleitman-Sapozhenko asked for the number $α(n)$ of such families, and they proved that $2^{\binom{n}{n/2}}\leq α(n) \leq 2^{2\sqrt{2}\binom{n}{n/2}(1+o(1))}$. They conjectured that the constant $2\sqrt{2}$ can be removed in the exponent of the right hand side. We prove their conjecture by formulating a new container-type theorem…
In 1991, Shalaby conjectured that any additive group $\mathbb{Z}_n$, where $n\equiv1$ or 3 (mod 8) and $n \geq11$, admits a strong Skolem starter and constructed these starters of all admissible orders $11\leq n\leq57$. Only finitely many strong Skolem starters have been known. Recently, in [O. Ogandzhanyants, M. Kondratieva and N. Shalaby, \emph{Strong Skolem Starters}, J. Combin. Des. {\bf 27} (2018), no. 1, 5--21] was given an infinite families of them. In this note, an infinite family of strong Skolem starters for $\mathbb{Z}_n$, where $n\equiv3$ mod 8 is a prime integer, is presented.
Our aim in this note is to show that, for any $ε>0$, there exists a union-closed family $\mathcal F$ with (unique) smallest set $S$ such that no element of $S$ belongs to more than a fraction $ε$ of the sets in $\mathcal F$. More precisely, we give an example of a union-closed family with smallest set of size $k$ such that no element of this set belongs to more than a fraction $(1+o(1))\frac{\log_2 k}{2k}$ of the sets in $\mathcal F$. We also give explicit examples of union-closed families containing `small' sets for which we have been unable to verify the Union-Closed Conjecture.
Let $r \geq 2$, $n$ and $k$ be integers satisfying $k \leq \frac{r-1}{r}n$. In the original arXiv version of this note we suggested a conjecture that the family of all $k$-subsets of an $n$-set cannot be partitioned into fewer than $\lceil n-\frac{r}{r-1}(k-1) \rceil$ $r$-wise intersecting families. We noted that if true this is tight for all values of the parameters, that the case $r=2$ is Kneser's conjecture, proved by Lovász, and observed that the assertion also holds provided $r$ is either a prime number or a power of $2$. We have recently learned, however, that the assertion of the conjec…
A family $F$ of graphs on a fixed set of $n$ vertices is called triangle-intersecting if for any $G_1,G_2 \in F$, the intersection $G_1 \cap G_2$ contains a triangle. More generally, for a fixed graph $H$, a family $F$ is $H$-intersecting if the intersection of any two graphs in $F$ contains a sub-graph isomorphic to $H$. In [D. Ellis, Y. Filmus, and E. Friedgut, Triangle-intersecting families of graphs, J. Eur. Math. Soc. 14 (2012), pp. 841--885], Ellis, Filmus and Friedgut proved a 36-year old conjecture of Simonovits and Sós stating that the maximal size of a triangle-intersecting family is…
These lecture notes provide an introduction to automorphism groups of graphs. Some special families of graphs are then discussed, especially the families of Cayley graphs generated by transposition sets.
Let $m(n)$ denote the maximum size of a family of subsets which does not contain two disjoint sets along with their union. In 1968 Kleitman proved that $m(n) = {n\choose m+1}+\ldots +{n\choose 2m+1}$ if $n=3m+1$. Confirming the conjecture of Kleitman, we establish the same equality for the cases $n=3m$ and $n=3m+2$, and also determine all extremal families. Unlike the case $n=3m+1$, the extremal families are not unique. This is a plausible reason behind the relative difficulty of our proofs. We completely settle the case of several families as well.
We propose a polynomial time construction of an $(n,d)$-universal set over alphabet $Σ=\{0,1\}$, of size $d\cdot 2^{d+o(d)}\cdot\log n$. This is an improvement over the size, $d^{5}2^{2.66d}\log n$, of an $(n,d)$-universal set constructed by Bshouty, \cite{BshoutyTesters}, over alphabet $Σ=\{0,1\}$.
A $k$-crossing family in a point set $S$ in general position is a set of $k$ segments spanned by points of $S$ such that all $k$ segments mutually cross. In this short note we present two statements on crossing families which are based on sets of small cardinality: (1) Any set of at least 15 points contains a crossing family of size 4. (2) There are sets of $n$ points which do not contain a crossing family of size larger than $8\lceil \frac{n}{41} \rceil$. Both results improve the previously best known bounds.
Let $\mathcal{F}_1$ and $\mathcal{F}_2$ be two families of subsets of an $n$-element set. We say that $\mathcal{F}_1$ and $\mathcal{F}_2$ are multiset-union-free if for any $A,B\in \mathcal{F}_1$ and $C,D\in \mathcal{F}_2$ the multisets $A\uplus C$ and $B\uplus D$ are different, unless both $A = B$ and $C= D$. We derive a new upper bound on the maximal sizes of multiset-union-free pairs, improving a result of Urbanke and Li.
A $d$-dimensional closed convex set $K$ in $\mathbb{R}^d$ is said to be lattice-free if the interior of $K$ is disjoint with $\mathbb{Z}^d$. We consider the following two families of lattice-free polytopes: the family $\mathcal{L}^d$ of integral lattice-free polytopes in $\mathbb{R}^d$ that are not properly contained in another integral lattice-free polytope and its subfamily $\mathcal{M}^d$ consisting of integral lattice-free polytopes in $\mathbb{R}^d$ which are not properly contained in another lattice-free set. It is known that $\mathcal{M}^d = \mathcal{L}^d$ holds for $d \le 3$ and, for e…
