We show that a dense subset of a sufficiently large group multiplication table contains either a large part of the addition table of the integers modulo some $k$, or the entire multiplication table of a certain large abelian group, as a subgrid. As a consequence, we show that triples systems coming from a finite group contain configurations with $t$ triples spanning $\mathcal{O}(\sqrt{t})$ vertices, which is the best possible up to the implied constant. We confirm that for all $t$ we can find a collection of $t$ triples spanning at most $t+3$ vertices, resolving the Brown--Erd\H os--Sós conjecture in this context. The proof applies well-known arithmetic results including the multidimensional versions of Szemerédi's theorem and the density Hales--Jewett theorem.
The Brown-Erdős-Sós conjecture, one of the central conjectures in extremal combinatorics, states that for any integer $m\geq 6,$ if a 3-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices contains no $m$ vertices spanning at least $m-3$ edges, then the number of edges is $o(n^2).$ We prove the conjecture for triple systems coming from finite abelian groups.
We prove the well-known Brown-Erdős-Sós Conjecture for hypergraphs of large uniformity in the following form: any dense linear $r$-graph $G$ has $k$ edges spanning at most $(r-2)k+3$ vertices, provided the uniformity $r$ of $G$ is large enough given the linear density of $G$, and the number of vertices of $G$ is large enough given $r$ and $k$.
The celebrated Brown-Erdős-Sós conjecture states that for every fixed $e$, every $3$-uniform hypergraph with $Ω(n^2)$ edges contains $e$ edges spanned by $e+3$ vertices. Up to this date all the approaches towards resolving this problem relied on highly involved applications of the hypergraph regularity method, and yet they supplied only approximate versions of the conjecture, producing $e$ edges spanned by $e+O(\log e/\log \log e)$ vertices. In this short paper we describe a completely different approach, which reduces the problem to a variant of another well-known conjecture in extremal graph…
The conjecture of Brown, Erdős and Sós from 1973 states that, for any $k \ge 3$, if a $3$-uniform hypergraph $H$ with $n$ vertices does not contain a set of $k+3$ vertices spanning at least $k$ edges then it has $o(n^2)$ edges. The case $k=3$ of this conjecture is the celebrated $(6,3)$-theorem of Ruzsa and Szemerédi which implies Roth's theorem on $3$-term arithmetic progressions in dense sets of integers. Solymosi observed that, in order to prove the conjecture, one can assume that $H$ consists of triples $(a, b, ab)$ of some finite quasigroup $Γ$. Since this problem remains open for all $k …
Erdős & Graham ask whether the equation $x^2+y^2=z^2$ is partition regular, i.e. whether it has a finite Rado number. This note provides a lower bound and also states results in the affirmative for two similar quadratic equations.
Let $f^{(r)}(n;s,k)$ be the maximum number of edges of an $r$-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices not containing a subgraph with $k$ edges and at most $s$ vertices. In 1973, Brown, Erdős and Sós conjectured that the limit $$\lim_{n\to \infty} n^{-2} f^{(3)}(n;k+2,k)$$ exists for all $k$ and confirmed it for $k=2$. Recently, Glock showed this for $k=3$. We settle the next open case, $k=4$, by showing that $f^{(3)}(n;6,4)=\left(\frac{7}{36}+o(1)\right)n^2$ as $n\to\infty$. More generally, for all $k\in \{3,4\}$, $r\ge 3$ and $t\in [2,r-1]$, we compute the value of the limit $\lim_{n\to \infty} n^…
An $r$-uniform hypergraph ($r$-graph for short) is called linear if every pair of vertices belong to at most one edge. A linear $r$-graph is complete if every pair of vertices are in exactly one edge. The famous Brown-Erdős-Sós conjecture states that for every fixed $k$ and $r$, every linear $r$-graph with $Ω(n^2)$ edges contains $k$ edges spanned by at most $(r-2)k+3$ vertices. As an intermediate step towards this conjecture, Conlon and Nenadov recently suggested to prove its natural Ramsey relaxation. Namely, that for every fixed $k$, $r$ and $c$, in every $c$-colouring of a complete linear …
Let $f(n,v,e)$ denote the maximum number of edges in a $3$-uniform hypergraph not containing $e$ edges spanned by at most $v$ vertices. One of the most influential open problems in extremal combinatorics then asks, for a given number of edges $e \geq 3$, what is the smallest integer $d=d(e)$ so that $f(n,e+d,e) = o(n^2)$? This question has its origins in work of Brown, Erdős and Sós from the early 70's and the standard conjecture is that $d(e)=3$ for every $e \geq 3$. The state of the art result regarding this problem was obtained in 2004 by Sárközy and Selkow, who showed that $f(n,e + 2 + \lf…
The size of the largest Erd\H os-Ko-Rado set of generators in the finite classical polar space is known for all polar spaces except for $H(2d-1,q^2)$ when $d\ge 5$ is odd. We improve the known upper bound in this remaining case by using a variant of the famous Hoffman's bound.
For fixed integers $r\ge 3, e\ge 3$, and $v\ge r+1$, let $f_r(n,v,e)$ denote the maximum number of edges in an $n$-vertex $r$-uniform hypergraph in which the union of arbitrary $e$ distinct edges contains at least $v+1$ vertices. In 1973, Brown, Erdős and Sós proved that $f_r(n,er-(e-1)k,e)=Θ(n^k)$ and conjectured that the limit $\lim_{n\rightarrow\infty}\frac{f_3(n,e+2,e)}{n^2}$ always exists for all fixed integers $e\ge 3$. In 2020 Shangguan and Tamo conjectured that the limit $\lim_{n\rightarrow\infty}\frac{f_r(n,er-(e-1)k,e)}{n^k}$ always exists for all fixed integers $r>k\ge 2$ and $e\ge …
A linear hypergraph is intersecting if any two different edges have exactly one common vertex and an $n$-quasicluster is an intersecting linear hypergraph with $n$ edges each one containing at most $n$ vertices and every vertex is contained in at least two edges. The Erdös-Faber-Lovász Conjecture states that the chromatic number of any $n$-quasicluster is at most $n$. In the present note we prove the correctness of the conjecture for a new infinite class of $n$-quasiclusters using a specific edge coloring of the complete graph.
A set of $q$ triangles sharing a common edge is a called a book of size $q$. Letting $bk(G)$ denote the size of the largest book in a graph $G$, Erdős and Rothschild \cite{erdostwo} asked what the minimal value of $bk(G)$ is for graphs $G$ with $n$ vertices and a set number of edges where every edge is contained in at least one triangle. In this paper, we show that for any graph $G$ with $n$ vertices and $\frac{n^2}{4} - nf(n)$ edges where every edge is contained in at least one triangle, $bk(G) \geq Ω\left(\min{\{\frac{n}{\sqrt{f(n)}}, \frac{n^2}{f(n)^2}\}}\right)$.
We show that there is an absolute constant $c>0$ such that the following holds. For every $n > 1$, there is a 5-uniform hypergraph on at least $2^{2^{cn^{1/4}}}$ vertices with independence number at most $n$, where every set of 6 vertices induces at most 3 edges. The double exponential growth rate for the number of vertices is sharp. By applying a stepping-up lemma established by the first two authors, analogous sharp results are proved for $k$-uniform hypergraphs. This answers the penultimate open case of a conjecture in Ramsey theory posed by Erdős and Hajnal in 1972.
In this short note we provide a relatively simple proof of the Erdős-Hajnal conjecture for families of finite (hyper-)graphs without the $k$-order property. It was originally proved by M. Malliaris and S. Shelah in "Regularity lemmas for stable graphs", Transactions AMS, 366, 2014, 1551-1585.
In this short note we show that both generalizations of celebrated Erdős--Ko--Rado theorem and Hilton--Milner theorem to the setting of exterior algebra in the simplest non-trivial case of two-forms follow from the folklore puzzle about possible arrangements of an intersecting family of lines.
We present two short proofs giving the best known asymptotic lower bound for the maximum element in a set of $n$ positive integers with distinct subset sums.
A decomposition of a simple graph $G$ is a pair $(G,P)$ where $P$ is a set of subgraphs of $G$, which partitions the edges of $G$ in the sense that every edge of $G$ belongs to exactly one subgraph in $P$. If the elements of $P$ are induced subgraphs then the decomposition is denoted by $[G,P]$. A $k$-$P$-coloring of a decomposition $(G,P)$ is a surjective function that assigns to the edges of $G$ a color from a $k$-set of colors, such that all edges of $H\in P$ have the same color, and, if $H_1,H_2\in P$ with $V(H_1)\cap V(H_2)\neq\emptyset$ then $E(H_1)$ and $E(H_2)$ have different colors. T…
In this short note we prove that for every $k\in \mathbb{N}$ there is a $t_k\in\mathbb{N}$ such that for every digraph $G$ there are either $k$ edge-disjoint directed cycles in $G$ or a set $X$ of at most $t_k$ edges such that $G-X$ contains no directed cycle.
A keyring is a graph obtained from a cycle by appending $r\ge0$ leaves to one of its vertices. Sidorenko proved an Erdős-Gallai-type theorem: Every graph of order $n$ and size more than $\frac{(k-1)n}{2}$ contains a keyring of size at least $k$ and with $r$ leaves for $r\le\frac{k-1}2$ (Theorem 1.4, An Erdős-Gallai-type theorem for keyrings, Graphs Combin., 2018). In this note, we show that Sidorenko's theorem holds for larger $r$ and so complete the Erdős-Gallai-type theorem for keyrings.
Given an integer $r\gs 2$, an important theorem first proved by B. Andrásfai, P. Erdős, and V. T. Sós states that any $K_{r+1}$--free graph on $n$ vertices whose minimum degree is greater than $(3r-4)n/(3r-1)$ is $r$--colourable, and determines the graphs that are extremal in this context. The purpose of this note is to give an alternative proof of this result using a different idea.
Burkill and Mirsky, and Kalmanson, prove independently that, for every $r\ge 2, n\ge 1$, there is a sequence of $r^{2^n}$ vectors in $\mathbb R^n$, which does not contain a subsequence of $r+1$ vectors $v^1, v^2,\dots,v^{r+1}$ such that, for every $i$ between 1 and $n$, $(v^{j}_i)_{1\le j\le r+1}$ forms a monotone sequence. Moreover, $r^{2^n}$ is the largest integer with this property. In this short note, for two vectors $u = (u_1, u_2,\dots, u_n)$ and $v = (v_1, v_2, \dots, v_n)$ in $\mathbb R^n$, we say that $u\le v$ if, for every $i$ between 1 and $n$, $u_i\le v_i$. Just like Burkill and Mi…
In this paper we give an asymptotically tight bound for the tolerated Tverberg Theorem when the dimension and the size of the partition are fixed. To achieve this we study certain partitions of order-type homogeneous sets and use a generalization of the Erdős-Szekeres theorem.
In 1965 Erdős asked, what is the largest size of a family of $k$-element subsets of an $n$-element set that does not have a matching of size $s+1$? In this note, we improve upon a recent result of Frankl and resolve this problem for $s>101k^{3}$ and $(s+1)k\le n<(s+1)(k+\frac{1}{100k})$.
A connected $n$-chromatic graph $G$ is double-critical if for all the edges $xy$ of $G$, the graph $G-x-y$ is $(n-2)$-chromatic. In 1966, Erd\H os and Lovász conjectured that the only double-critical $n$-chromatic graph is $K_n$. This conjecture remains unresolved for $n \ge 6.$ In this short note, we verify this conjecture for claw-free graphs $G$ of chromatic number $6$.
A set system F is intersecting if any pair of sets in F have a nonempty intersection. A fundamental theorem of Erdős, Ko and Rado states that if F is an intersecting family of r-subsets of [n]={1,...,n}, and n>= 2r, then the cardinality of F is at most the cardinality of the family of all r-subsets of [n] containing a fixed element. Furthermore, when n>2r, equality holds if and only if F is the family of all r-subsets of [n] containing a fixed element. This characterization was proved as part of a stronger result by Hilton and Milner. In this note, we provide new injective proofs of the Erdős-…
According to the Erdős-Szekeres theorem, for every $n$, a sufficiently large set of points in general position in the plane contains $n$ in convex position. In this note we investigate the line version of this result, that is, we want to find $n$ lines in convex position in a sufficiently large set of lines that are in general position. We prove almost matching upper and lower bounds for the minimum size of the set of lines in general position that always contains $n$ in convex position. This is quite unexpected, since in the case of points, the best known bounds are very far from each other. …
