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.
In this survey we describe a recently-developed technique for bounding the number (and controlling the typical structure) of finite objects with forbidden substructures. This technique exploits a subtle clustering phenomenon exhibited by the independent sets of uniform hypergraphs whose edges are sufficiently evenly distributed; more precisely, it provides a relatively small family of 'containers' for the independent sets, each of which contains few edges. We attempt to convey to the reader a general high-level overview of the method, focusing on a small number of illustrative applications in …
A set of containers for a hypergraph G is a collection of vertex subsets, such that for every independent (or, indeed, merely sparse) set in G there is some subset in the collection which contains it. No set in the collection should be large and the collection itself should be relatively small. Containers with useful properties have been exhibited by Balogh, Morris and Samotij and by the authors, along with several applications. Our purpose here is to give a simpler algorithm than the one we used previously, which nevertheless yields containers with all the properties needed for our previous t…
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…
In breakthrough results, Saxton-Thomason and Balogh-Morris-Samotij developed powerful theories of hypergraph containers. In this paper, we explore some consequences of these theories. We use a simple container theorem of Saxton-Thomason and an entropy-based framework to deduce container and counting theorems for hereditary properties of k-colourings of very general objects, which include both vertex- and edge-colourings of general hypergraph sequences as special cases. In the case of sequences of complete graphs, we further derive characterisation and transference results for hereditary proper…
Let $χ_l(G)$ denote the list chromatic number of the $r$-uniform hypergraph~$G$. Extending a result of Alon for graphs, Saxton and the second author used the method of containers to prove that, if $G$ is simple and $d$-regular, then $χ_l(G)\ge (1/(r-1)+o(1))\log_r d$. To see how close this inequality is to best possible, we examine $χ_l(G)$ when $G$ is a random $r$-partite hypergraph with $n$ vertices in each class. The value when $r=2$ was determined by Alon and Krivelevich, here we show that $χ_l(G)= (g(r,α)+o(1))\log_r d$ almost surely, where $d$ is the expected average degree of~$G$ and $α…
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.
Many important problems in combinatorics and other related areas can be phrased in the language of independent sets in hypergraphs. Recently Balogh, Morris and Samotij, and independently Saxton and Thomason developed very general container theorems for independent sets in hypergraphs; both of which have seen numerous applications to a wide range of problems. In this paper we use the container method to give relatively short and elementary proofs of a number of results concerning Ramsey (and Turán) properties of (hyper)graphs and the integers. In particular: (i) We generalise the random Ramsey …
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.
We consider connected components in $k$-uniform hypergraphs for the following notion of connectedness: given integers $k\ge 2$ and $1\le j \le k-1$, two $j$-sets (of vertices) lie in the same $j$-component if there is a sequence of edges from one to the other such that consecutive edges intersect in at least $j$ vertices. We prove that certain collections of $j$-sets constructed during a breadth-first search process on $j$-components in a random $k$-uniform hypergraph are reasonably regularly distributed with high probability. We use this property to provide a short proof of the asymptotic siz…
For a fixed positive integer $n$ and an $r$-uniform hypergraph $H$, the Turán number $ex(n,H)$ is the maximum number of edges in an $H$-free $r$-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices, and the Lagrangian density of $H$ is defined as $π_λ(H)=\sup \{r! λ(G) : G \;\text{is an}\; H\text{-free} \;r\text{-uniform hypergraph}\}$, where $λ(G)$ is the Lagrangian of $G$. For an $r$-uniform hypergraph $H$ on $t$ vertices, it is clear that $π_λ(H)\ge r!λ{(K_{t-1}^r)}$. We say that an $r$-uniform hypergraph $H$ on $t$ vertices is perfect if $π_λ(H)= r!λ{(K_{t-1}^r)}$. Let $P_t=\{e_1, e_2, \dots, e_t\}$ be the …
Here we give a short, concise proof for the following result. There exists a $k$-uniform hypergraph $H$ (for $k\geq 5$) without exponent, i.e., when the Turán function is not polynomial in $n$. More precisely, we have $ex(n,H)=o(n^{k-1})$ but it exceeds $n^{k-1-c}$ for any positive $c$ for $n> n_0(k,c)$. This is an extension (and simplification) of a result of Frankl and the first author from 1987 where the case $k=5$ was proven. We conjecture that it is true for $k\in \{3, 4\}$ as well.
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.
We present new short proofs to both the exact and the stability results of two extremal problems. The first one is the extension of Turán's theorem in hypergraphs, which was firstly studied by Mubayi $\cite{MU06}$. The second one is about the cancellative hypergraphs, which was firstly studied by Bollobás $\cite{BO74}$ and later by Keevash and Mubayi $\cite{KM04}$. Our proofs are concise and straightforward, but give a sharper version of stability theorems to both problems.
Let $F$ be a strictly balanced $r$-uniform hypergraph with $e>2$ edges and $r$-density $m$. We give a new short proof of the fact that the Turán number $\ex(n, F)$ is greater than $c\, n^{r-1/m} (\log n)^{1/(e-1)}$ where $c$ depends only on $F$. The previous proof of this for $r=2$ by Bohman and Keevash and for $r \ge 3$ by Bennett and Bohman used a random greedy process and its analysis using the differential equations method. Our proof uses elementary probabilistic arguments together with a (nontrivial) classical result about independent sets in hypergraphs.
An $n$-vertex graph $G$ of edge density $p$ is considered to be quasirandom if it shares several important properties with the random graph $G(n,p)$. A well-known theorem of Chung, Graham and Wilson states that many such `typical' properties are asymptotically equivalent and, thus, a graph $G$ possessing one such property automatically satisfies the others. In recent years, work in this area has focused on uncovering more quasirandom graph properties and on extending the known results to other discrete structures. In the context of hypergraphs, however, one may consider several different notio…
For a fixed $r$, let $f_r(n)$ denote the minimum number of complete $r$-partite $r$-graphs needed to partition the complete $r$-graph on $n$ vertices. The Graham-Pollak theorem asserts that $f_2(n)=n-1$. An easy construction shows that $f_r(n) \leq (1+o(1))\binom{n}{\lfloor r/2 \rfloor}$, and we write $c_r$ for the least number such that $f_r(n) \leq c_r (1+o(1))\binom{n}{\lfloor r/2 \rfloor}$. It was known that $c_r < 1$ for each even $r \geq 4$, but this was not known for any odd value of $r$. In this short note, we prove that $c_{295}<1$. Our method also shows that $c_r \rightarrow 0$, answ…
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…
