Recently the breakthrough method of hypergraph containers, developed independently by Balogh, Morris, and Samotij as well as Saxton and Thomason, has been used to study sparse random analogs of a variety of classical problems from combinatorics and number theory. The previously known proofs of the containers theorem use the so-called scythe algorithm---an iterative procedure that runs through the vertices of the hypergraph. (Saxton and Thomason have also proposed an alternative, randomized construction in the case of simple hypergraphs.) Here we present the first known deterministic proof of the containers theorem that is not algorithmic, i.e., it does not involve an iterative process. Our proof is less than 4 pages long while being entirely self-contained and conceptually transparent. Although our proof is completely elementary, it was inspired by considering hypergraphs in the setting of nonstandard analysis, where there is a notion of dimension capturing the logarithmic rate of growth of finite sets. Before presenting the proof in full detail, we include a one-page informal outline that refers to this notion of dimension and summarizes the essence of the argument.
We prove a new, efficient version of the hypergraph container theorems that is suited for hypergraphs with large uniformities. The main novelty is a refined approach to constructing containers that employs simple ideas from high-dimensional convex geometry. The existence of smaller families of containers for independent sets in such hypergraphs, which is guaranteed by the new theorem, allows us to improve upon the best currently known bounds for several problems in extremal graph theory, discrete geometry, and Ramsey theory.
We present a general method to convert algorithms into faster algorithms for almost-regular input instances. Informally, an almost-regular input is an input in which the maximum degree is larger than the average degree by at most a constant factor. This family of inputs vastly generalizes several families of inputs for which we commonly have improved algorithms, including bounded-degree inputs and random inputs. It also generalizes families of inputs for which we don't usually have faster algorithms, including regular-inputs of arbitrarily high degree and very dense inputs. We apply our method…
We use the hypergraph container theory of Balogh--Morris--Samotij and Saxton--Thomason to obtain general rectilinear approximations and volume estimates for sequences of bodies closed under certain families of projections. We give a number of applications of our results, including a multicolour generalisation of a theorem of Hatami, Janson and Szegedy on the entropy of graph limits. Finally, we raise a number of questions on geometric and analytic approaches to containers.
A classical theorem of Simonovits from the 1980s asserts that every graph $G$ satisfying ${e(G) \gg v(G)^{1+1/k}}$ must contain $\gtrsim \left(\frac{e(G)}{v(G)}\right)^{2k}$ copies of $C_{2k}$. Recently, Morris and Saxton established a balanced version of Simonovits' theorem, showing that such $G$ has $\gtrsim \left(\frac{e(G)}{v(G)}\right)^{2k}$ copies of $C_{2k}$, which are `uniformly distributed' over the edges of $G$. Moreover, they used this result to obtain a sharp bound on the number of $C_{2k}$-free graphs via the container method. In this paper, we generalise Morris-Saxton's results f…
We expand the structural theory of \ca graphs that avoid specific cyclic coset patterns. We present several characterisations of tree-likeness for these structures and show a close connection to $α$-acyclic hypergraphs. A focus lies on the behaviour of short paths of overlapping cosets in these \ca graphs, and their relation to short chordless paths in hypergraphs that are locally acyclic.
Szemerédi's theorem implies that there are $2^{o(n)}$ subsets of $[n]$ which do not contain a $k$-term arithmetic progression. A sparse analogue of this statement was obtained by Balogh, Morris, and Samotij, using the hypergraph container method: For any $β> 0$ there exists $C > 0$, such that if $m \ge Cn^{1 - 1/(k-1)}$ then there are at most $β^m \binom{n}{m}$ $m$-element subsets of $\{1, \ldots, n\}$ without a $k$-term arithmetic progression. We give a short, inductive proof of this result. Consequently, this provides a short proof of the Szemerédi's theorem in random subsets of integers.
The hypergraph Moore bound is an elegant statement that characterizes the extremal trade-off between the girth - the number of hyperedges in the smallest cycle or even cover (a subhypergraph with all degrees even) and size - the number of hyperedges in a hypergraph. For graphs (i.e., $2$-uniform hypergraphs), a bound tight up to the leading constant was proven in a classical work of Alon, Hoory and Linial [AHL02]. For hypergraphs of uniformity $k>2$, an appropriate generalization was conjectured by Feige [Fei08]. The conjecture was settled up to an additional $\log^{4k+1} n$ factor in the size…
