We systematically study a natural problem in extremal graph theory, to minimize the number of edges in a graph with a fixed number of vertices, subject to a certain local condition: each vertex must be in a copy of a fixed graph $H$. We completely solve this problem when $H$ is a clique, as well as more generally when $H$ is any regular graph with degree at least about half its number of vertices. We also characterize the extremal graphs when $H$ is an Erdős-Rényi random graph. The extremal structures turn out to have the similar form as the conjectured extremal structures for a well-studied but elusive problem of similar flavor with local constraints: to maximize the number of copies of a fixed clique in graphs in which all degrees have a fixed upper bound.
We prove a general lemma (inspired by a lemma of Holroyd and Talbot) about the connection of the largest cardinalities (or weight) of structures satisfying some hereditary property and substructures satisfying the same hereditary property. We use it to show how results concerning forbidden subposet problems in the Boolean poset imply analogous results in the poset of subspaces of a finite vector space. We also study generalized forbidden subposet problems in the poset of subspaces.
A relationship between $s$-extremal singly even self-dual $[24k+8,12k+4,4k+2]$ codes and extremal doubly even self-dual $[24k+8,12k+4,4k+4]$ codes with covering radius meeting the Delsarte bound, is established. As an example of the relationship, $s$-extremal singly even self-dual $[56,28,10]$ codes are constructed for the first time. In addition, we show that there is no extremal doubly even self-dual code of length $24k+8$ with covering radius meeting the Delsarte bound for $k \ge 137$. Similarly, we show that there is no extremal doubly even self-dual code of length $24k+16$ with covering r…
The main focus of this thesis is a generalization of covering arrays, covering arrays on graphs. Two vectors v,w in Z_k^n are qualitatively independent if for all ordered pairs (a,b) in Z_k x Z_k there is a position i in the vectors where (a,b) = (v_i,w_i). A covering array is an array with the property that any pair of rows are qualitatively independent. A covering array on a graph is an array with a row for each vertex of the graph with the property that any two rows which correspond to adjacent vertices are qualitatively independent. The addition of a graph structure to covering arrays make…
We determine the maximum number of maximal independent sets of arbitrary graphs in terms of their covering numbers and we completely characterize the extremal graphs. As an application, we give a similar result for König-Egerváry graphs in terms of their matching numbers.
Erdős and Lovász noticed that an $r$-uniform intersecting hypergraph $H$ with maximal covering number, that is $τ(H)=r$, must have at least $\frac{8}{3}r-3$ edges. There has been no improvement on this lower bound for 45 years. We try to understand the reason by studying some small cases to see whether the truth lies very close to this simple bound. Let $q(r)$ denote the minimum number of edges in an intersecting $r$-uniform hypergraph. It was known that $q(3)=6$ and $q(4)=9$. We obtain the following new results: The extremal example for uniformity 4 is unique. Somewhat surprisingly it is not …
We generalize several classical theorems in extremal combinatorics by replacing a global constraint with an inequality which holds for all objects in a given class. In particular we obtain generalizations of Turán's theorem, the Erdős-Gallai theorem, the LYM-inequality, the Erdős-Ko-Rado theorem and the Erdős-Szekeres theorem on sequences.
This article studies the \emph{$k$-forcing number} for oriented graphs, generalizing both the \emph{zero forcing number} for directed graphs and the $k$-forcing number for simple graphs. In particular, given a simple graph $G$, we introduce the maximum (minimum) oriented $k$-forcing number, denoted $\MOF_k(G)$ ($\mof_k(G)$), which is the largest (smallest) $k$-forcing number among all possible orientations of $G$. These new ideas are compared to known graph invariants and it is shown that, among other things, $\mof(G)$ equals the path covering number of $G$ while $\MOF_k(G)$ is greater than or…
Given two 3-uniform hypergraphs F and G, we say that G has an F-covering if we can cover V(G) by copies of F. The minimum codegree of G is the largest integer d such that every pair of vertices from V(G) is contained in at least d triples from E(G). Define c_2(n,F) to be the largest minimum codegree among all n-vertex 3-graphs G that contain no F-covering. This is a natural problem intermediate (but distinct) from the well-studied Turán problems and tiling problems. In this paper, we determine c_2(n, K_4) (for n>98) and the associated extremal configurations (for n>998), where K_4 denotes the …
We show that any $3$-connected cubic plane graph on $n$ vertices, with all faces of size at most $6$, can be made bipartite by deleting no more than $\sqrt{(p+3t)n/5}$ edges, where $p$ and $t$ are the numbers of pentagonal and triangular faces, respectively. In particular, any such graph can be made bipartite by deleting at most $\sqrt{12n/5}$ edges. This bound is tight, and we characterise the extremal graphs. We deduce tight lower bounds on the size of a maximum cut and a maximum independent set for this class of graphs. This extends and sharpens the results of Faria, Klein and Stehlik [SIAM…
Motivated by the problem of integer sparse recovery we study the following question. Let $A$ be an $m \times d$ integer matrix whose entries are in absolute value at most $k$. How large can be $d=d(m,k)$ if all $m \times m$ submatrices of $A$ are non-degenerate? We obtain new upper and lower bounds on $d$ and answer a special case of the problem by Brass, Moser and Pach on covering $m$-dimensional $k \times \cdots\times k$ grid by linear subspaces.
Consider the family of all perfect matchings of the complete graph $K_{2n}$ with $2n$ vertices. Given any collection $\mathcal M$ of perfect matchings of size $s$, there exists a maximum number $f(n,x)$ such that if $s\leq f(n,x)$, then there exists a perfect matching that agrees with each perfect matching in $\mathcal M$ in at most $x-1$ edges. We use probabilistic arguments to give several lower bounds for $f(n,x)$. We also apply the Lovász local lemma to find a function $g(n,x)$ such that if each edge appears at most $g(n, x)$ times then there exists a perfect matching that agrees with each…
An $(n,s,q)$-graph is an $n$-vertex multigraph where every set of $s$ vertices spans at most $q$ edges. In this paper, we determine the maximum product of the edge multiplicities in $(n,s,q)$-graphs if the congruence class of $q$ modulo ${s\choose 2}$ is in a certain interval of length about $3s/2$. The smallest case that falls outside this range is $(s,q)=(4,15)$, and here the answer is $a^{n^2+o(n^2)}$ where $a$ is transcendental assuming Schanuel's conjecture. This could indicate the difficulty of solving the problem in full generality. Many of our results can be seen as extending work by B…
Given a collection of n rooted trees with depth h, we give a necessary and sufficient condition for this collection to be the collection of h-depth universal covering neighborhoods at each vertex.
The triangle covering number of a graph is the minimum number of vertices that hit all triangles. Given positive integers $s,t$ and an $n$-vertex graph $G$ with $\lfloor n^2/4 \rfloor +t$ edges and triangle covering number $s$, we determine (for large $n$) sharp bounds on the minimum number of triangles in $G$ and also describe the extremal constructions. Similar results are proved for cliques of larger size and color critical graphs. This extends classical work of Rademacher, Erd\H os, and Lovász-Simonovits whose results apply only to $s \le t$. Our results also address two conjectures of Xia…
Among many topological indices of trees the sum of distances $σ(T)$ and the number of subtrees $F(T)$ have been a long standing pair of graph invariants that are well known for their negative correlation. That is, among various given classes of trees, the extremal structures maximizing one usually minimize the other, and vice versa. By introducing the "local" versions of these invariants, $σ_T(v)$ for the sum of distance from $v$ to all other vertices and $F_T(v)$ for the number of subtrees containing $v$, extremal problems can be raised and studied for vertices within a tree. This leads to th…
The concept of maximum local connectivity $\bar κ$ of a graph was introduced by Bollobás. One of the problems about it is to determine the largest number of edges $f(n;\barκ\leq \ell)$ for graphs of order $n$ that have local connectivity at most $\ell$. We consider a generalization of the above concept and problem. For $S\subseteq V(G)$ and $|S|\geq 2$, the \emph{generalized local connectivity} $κ(S)$ is the maximum number of internally disjoint trees connecting $S$ in $G$. The parameter $\barκ_k(G)=max\{κ(S)|S\subseteq V(G),|S|=k\}$ is called the \emph{maximum generalized local connectivity} …
A k-clique covering of a simple graph G, is an edge covering of G by its cliques such that each vertex is contained in at most k cliques. The smallest k for which G admits a k-clique covering is called local clique cover number of G and is denoted by $lcc(G)$. Local clique cover number can be viewed as the local counterpart of the clique cover number which is equal to the minimum total number of cliques covering all edges. In this paper, several aspects of the problem are studied and its relationships to other well-known problems are discussed. Moreover, the local clique cover number of claw-f…
Minors play an important role in extremal graph theory and spectral extremal graph theory. Tait [The Colin de Verdière parameter, excluded minors, and the spectral radius, J. Combin. Theory Ser. A 166 (2019) 42--58] determined the maximum spectral radius and characterized the unique extremal graph for $K_r$-minor free graphs of sufficiently large order $n$, he also made great progress on $K_{s,t}$-minor free graphs and posed a conjecture: Let $2\leq s\leq t$ and $n-s+1=pt+q$, where $n$ is sufficiently large and $1\leq q\leq t.$ Then $K_{s-1}\nabla (pK_t\cup K_q)$ is the unique extremal graph w…
Demazure crystals are subcrystals of highest weight irreducible $\mathfrak{g}$-crystals. In this article, we study tensor products of a larger class of subcrystals, called extremal, and give a local characterization for exactly when the tensor product of Demazure crystals is extremal. We then show that tensor products of Demazure crystals decompose into direct sums of Demazure crystals if and only if the tensor product is extremal, thus providing a sufficient and necessary local criterion for when the tensor product of Demazure crystals is itself Demazure. As an application, we show that the p…
In this paper we are concerned with three lattice problems: the lattice packing problem, the lattice covering problem and the lattice packing-covering problem. One way to find optimal lattices for these problems is to enumerate all finitely many, locally optimal lattices. For the lattice packing problem there are two classical algorithms going back to Minkowski and Voronoi. For the covering and for the packing-covering problem we propose new algorithms. Here we give a brief survey about these approaches. We report on some recent computer based computations where we were able to reproduce and p…
We show that the Leech lattice gives a sphere covering which is locally least dense among lattice coverings. We show that a similar result is false for the root lattice E8. For this we construct a less dense covering lattice whose Delone subdivision has a common refinement with the Delone subdivision of E8. The new lattice yields a sphere covering which is more than 12% less dense than the formerly best known given by the lattice A8*. Currently, the Leech lattice is the first and only known example of a locally optimal lattice covering having a non-simplicial Delone subdivision. We hereby in p…
We study covering numbers and local covering numbers with respect to difference graphs and complete bipartite graphs. In particular we show that in every cover of a Young diagram with $\binom{2k}{k}$ steps with generalized rectangles there is a row or a column in the diagram that is used by at least $k+1$ rectangles, and prove that this is best-possible. This answers two questions by Kim, Martin, Masa{ř}{\'ı}k, Shull, Smith, Uzzell, and Wang (Europ. J. Comb. 2020), namely: - What is the local complete bipartite cover number of a difference graph? - Is there a sequence of graphs with constant l…
