Given a family of graphs $\mathcal{F}$, a graph $G$ is said to be $\mathcal{F}$-saturated if $G$ does not contain a copy of $F$ as a subgraph for any $F\in\mathcal{F}$ but the addition of any edge $e\notin E(G)$ creates at least one copy of some $F\in\mathcal{F}$ within $G$. The minimum size of an $\mathcal{F}$-saturated graph on $n$ vertices are called the saturation number, denoted by $\sat(n, \mathcal{F})$. Let $\mathcal{C}_{\ge r}$ be the family of cycles of length at least $r$. Ferrara et al. (2012) gave lower and upper bounds of $\sat(n, C_{\ge r})$ and determined the exact values of $\sat(n, C_{\ge r})$ for $3\le r\le 5$. In this paper, we determine the exact value of $\sat(n,\mathcal{C}_{\ge r})$ for $r=6$ and $28\le \frac{n}2\le r\le n$ and give new upper and lower bounds for the other cases.
A graph $G$ is $F$-saturated if it contains no copy of $F$ as a subgraph but the addition of any new edge to $G$ creates a copy of $F$. We prove that for $s \geq 3$ and $t \geq 2$, the minimum number of copies of $K_{1,t}$ in a $K_s$-saturated graph is $Θ( n^{t/2})$. More precise results are obtained when $t = 2$ where the problem is related to Moore graphs with diameter 2 and girth 5. We prove that for $s \geq 4$ and $t \geq 3$, the minimum number of copies of $K_{2,t}$ in an $n$-vertex $K_s$-saturated graph is at least $Ω( n^{t/5 + 8/5})$ and at most $O(n^{t/2 + 3/2})$. These results answer …
For a fixed graph $F$, a graph $G$ is said to be $F$-saturated if $G$ does not contain a subgraph isomorphic to $F$ but does contain $F$ after the addition of any new edge. Let $M_k$ be a matching consisting of $k$ edges and $S_{n,k}$ be the join graph of a complete graph $K_k$ and an empty graph $\overline{K_{n-k}}$. In this paper, we prove that for $s \geq3$ and $k\geq 2$, $S_{n,s-2}$ contains the minimum number of $M_k$ among all $n$-vertex $K_s$-saturated graphs for sufficiently large $n$, and when $k \leq s-2$, it is the unique extremal graph. In addition, we also show that $S_{n,1}$ is t…
This paper considers an edge minimization problem in saturated bipartite graphs. An $n$ by $n$ bipartite graph $G$ is $H$-saturated if $G$ does not contain a subgraph isomorphic to $H$ but adding any missing edge to $G$ creates a copy of $H$. More than half a century ago, Wessel and Bollobás independently solved the problem of minimizing the number of edges in $K_{(s,t)}$-saturated graphs, where $K_{(s,t)}$ is the `ordered' complete bipartite graph with $s$ vertices from the first color class and $t$ from the second. However, the very natural `unordered' analogue of this problem was considered…
This paper considers two important questions in the well-studied theory of graphs that are $F$-saturated. A graph $G$ is called $F$-saturated if $G$ does not contain a subgraph isomorphic to $F$, but the addition of any edge creates a copy of $F$. We first resolve a fundamental question of minimizing the number of cliques of size $r$ in a $K_s$-saturated graph for all sufficiently large numbers of vertices, confirming a conjecture of Kritschgau, Methuku, Tait, and Timmons. We also go further and prove a corresponding stability result. Next we minimize the number of cycles of length $r$ in a $K…
An $\mathcal{F}$-saturated $r$-graph is a maximal $r$-graph not containing any member of $\mathcal{F}$ as a subgraph. Let $\mathcal{K}_{\ell + 1}^{r}$ be the collection of all $r$-graphs $F$ with at most $\binom{\ell+1}{2}$ edges such that for some $\left(\ell+1\right)$-set $S$ every pair $\{u, v\} \subset S$ is covered by an edge in $F$. Our first result shows that for each $\ell \geq r \geq 2$ every $\mathcal{K}_{\ell+1}^{r}$-saturated $r$-graph on $n$ vertices with $t_{r}(n, \ell) - o(n^{r-1+1/\ell})$ edges contains a complete $\ell$-partite subgraph on $(1-o(1))n$ vertices, which extends a…
We call a family $\mathcal{F}$ of subsets of $[n]$ $s$-saturated if it contains no $s$ pairwise disjoint sets, and moreover no set can be added to $\mathcal{F}$ while preserving this property (here $[n] = \{1,\ldots,n\}$). More than 40 years ago, Erdős and Kleitman conjectured that an $s$-saturated family of subsets of $[n]$ has size at least $(1 - 2^{-(s-1)})2^n$. It is easy to show that every $s$-saturated family has size at least $\frac{1}{2}\cdot 2^n$, but, as was mentioned by Frankl and Tokushige, even obtaining a slightly better bound of $(1/2 + \varepsilon)2^n$, for some fixed $\varepsi…
Let $\mathcal{F}$ be a family of graphs. A graph $G$ is $\mathcal{F}$-saturated if $G$ contains no member of $\mathcal{F}$ as a subgraph but $G+e$ contains some member of $\mathcal{F}$ whenever $e\in E(\overline{G})$. The saturation number and extremal number of $\mathcal{F}$, denoted $sat(n,\mathcal{F})$ and $ex(n,\mathcal{F})$ respectively, are the minimum and maximum numbers of edges among $n$-vertex $\mathcal{F}$-saturated graphs. For $k\in\mathbb{N}$, let $\mathcal{F}_k$ and $\mathcal{F}'_k$ be the families of $k$-connected and $k$-edge-connected graphs, respectively. Wenger proved $sat(n…
Given a finite poset $\mathcal P$, we call a family $\mathcal F$ of subsets of $[n]$ $\mathcal P$-saturated if $\mathcal F$ does not contain an induced copy of $\mathcal P$, but adding any other set to $\mathcal F$ creates an induced copy of $\mathcal P$. The induced saturated number of $\mathcal P$, denoted by $\text{sat}^*(n,\mathcal P)$, is the size of the smallest $\mathcal P$-saturated family with ground set $[n]$. In this paper we are mainly interested in the four-point poset called the butterfly. Ferrara, Kay, Kramer, Martin, Reiniger, Smith and Sullivan showed that the saturation numbe…
Let $\mathcal{F}$ be a family of $r$-graphs. An $r$-graph $G$ is called $\mathcal{F}$-saturated if it does not contain any members of $\mathcal{F}$ but adding any edge creates a copy of some $r$-graph in $\mathcal{F}$. The saturation number $\operatorname{sat}(\mathcal{F},n)$ is the minimum number of edges in an $\mathcal{F}$-saturated graph on $n$ vertices. We prove that there exists a finite family $\mathcal{F}$ such that $\operatorname{sat}(\mathcal{F},n) / n^{r-1}$ does not tend to a limit. This settles a question of Pikhurko.
Given a set $X$, a collection $\mathcal{F}\subseteq\mathcal{P}(X)$ is said to be $k$-Sperner if it does not contain a chain of length $k+1$ under set inclusion and it is saturated if it is maximal with respect to this property. Gerbner et al. conjectured that, if $|X|$ is sufficiently large with respect to $k$, then the minimum size of a saturated $k$-Sperner system $\mathcal{F}\subseteq\mathcal{P}(X)$ is $2^{k-1}$. We disprove this conjecture by showing that there exists $\varepsilon>0$ such that for every $k$ and $|X| \geq n_0(k)$ there exists a saturated $k$-Sperner system $\mathcal{F}\subs…
Let $G$ be a fixed graph and let ${\mathcal F}$ be a family of graphs. A subgraph $J$ of $G$ is ${\mathcal F}$-saturated if no member of ${\mathcal F}$ is a subgraph of $J$, but for any edge $e$ in $E(G)-E(J)$, some element of ${\mathcal F}$ is a subgraph of $J+e$. We let $\text{ex}({\mathcal F},G)$ and $\text{sat}({\mathcal F},G)$ denote the maximum and minimum size of an ${\mathcal F}$-saturated subgraph of $G$, respectively. If no element of ${\mathcal F}$ is a subgraph of $G$, then $\text{sat}({\mathcal F},G) = \text{ex}({\mathcal F}, G) = |E(G)|$. In this paper, for $k\ge 3$ and $n\ge 100…
Given a finite poset $\mathcal{P}$, a family $\mathcal{F}$ of elements in the Boolean lattice is induced-$\mathcal{P}$-saturated if $\mathcal{F}$ contains no copy of $\mathcal{P}$ as an induced subposet but every proper superset of $\mathcal{F}$ contains a copy of $\mathcal{P}$ as an induced subposet. The minimum size of an induced-$\mathcal{P}$-saturated family in the $n$-dimensional Boolean lattice, denoted $\operatorname{sat}^*(n,\mathcal{P})$, was first studied by Ferrara et al. (2017). Our work focuses on strengthening lower bounds. For the 4-point poset known as the diamond, we prove $\o…
The well-known Sauer lemma states that a family $\mathcal{F}\subseteq 2^{[n]}$ of VC-dimension at most $d$ has size at most $\sum_{i=0}^d\binom{n}{i}$. We obtain both random and explicit constructions to prove that the corresponding saturation number, i.e., the size of the smallest maximal family with VC-dimension $d\ge 2$, is at most $4^{d+1}$, and thus is independent of $n$.
Let $n\geqslant 3$ be a natural number. We study the problem to find the smallest $r$ such that there is a family $\mathcal{A}$ of 2-subsets and 3-subsets of $[n]=\{1,2,...,n\}$ with the following properties: (1) $\mathcal{A}$ is an antichain, i.e. no member of $\mathcal A$ is a subset of any other member of $\mathcal A$, (2) $\mathcal A$ is maximal, i.e. for every $X\in 2^{[n]}\setminus\mathcal A$ there is an $A\in\mathcal A$ with $X\subseteq A$ or $A\subseteq X$, and (3) $\mathcal A$ is $r$-regular, i.e. every point $x\in[n]$ is contained in exactly $r$ members of $\mathcal A$. We prove lowe…
Let $\mathcal{C}$ be a family of edge-colored graphs. A $t$-edge colored graph $G$ is $(\mathcal{C}, t)$-saturated if $G$ does not contain any graph in $\mathcal{C}$ but the addition of any edge in any color in $[t]$ creates a copy of some graph in $\mathcal{C}$. Similarly to classical saturation functions, define $\mathrm{sat}_t(n, \mathcal{C})$ to be the minimum number of edges in a $(\mathcal{C},t)$ saturated graph. Let $\mathcal{C}_r(H)$ be the family consisting of every edge-colored copy of $H$ which uses exactly $r$ colors. In this paper we consider a variety of colored saturation proble…
Given graphs $H_1, \dots, H_t$, a graph $G$ is $(H_1, \dots, H_t)$-Ramsey-minimal if every $t$-coloring of the edges of $G$ contains a monochromatic $H_i$ in color $i$ for some $i\in\{1, \dots, t\}$, but any proper subgraph of $G $ does not possess this property. We define $\mathcal{R}_{\min}(H_1, \dots, H_t)$ to be the family of $(H_1, \dots, H_t)$-Ramsey-minimal graphs. A graph $G$ is \dfn{$\mathcal{R}_{\min}(H_1, \dots, H_t)$-saturated} if no element of $\mathcal{R}_{\min}(H_1, \dots, H_t)$ is a subgraph of $G$, but for any edge $e$ in $\overline{G}$, some element of $\mathcal{R}_{\min}(H_1…
For a class $\mathcal{D}$ of drawings of loopless (multi-)graphs in the plane, a drawing $D \in \mathcal{D}$ is \emph{saturated} when the addition of any edge to $D$ results in $D' \notin \mathcal{D}$ - this is analogous to saturated graphs in a graph class as introduced by Turán (1941) and Erdős, Hajnal, and Moon (1964). We focus on $k$-planar drawings, that is, graphs drawn in the plane where each edge is crossed at most $k$ times, and the classes $\mathcal{D}$ of all $k$-planar drawings obeying a number of restrictions, such as having no crossing incident edges, no pair of edges crossing mo…
Given an integer $r\ge1$ and graphs $G, H_1, \ldots, H_r$, we write $G \rightarrow ({H}_1, \ldots, {H}_r)$ if every $r$-coloring of the edges of $G$ contains a monochromatic copy of $H_i$ in color $i$ for some $i\in\{1, \ldots, r\}$. A non-complete graph $G$ is $(H_1, \ldots, H_r)$-co-critical if $G \nrightarrow ({H}_1, \ldots, {H}_r)$, but $G+e\rightarrow ({H}_1, \ldots, {H}_r)$ for every edge $e$ in $\overline{G}$. In this paper, motivated by Hanson and Toft's conjecture [Edge-colored saturated graphs, J Graph Theory 11(1987), 191--196], we study the minimum number of edges over all $(K_t, \…
A graph $G = (V,E)$ is said to be saturated with respect to a monotone increasing graph property ${\mathcal P}$, if $G \notin {\mathcal P}$ but $G \cup \{e\} \in {\mathcal P}$ for every $e \in \binom{V}{2} \setminus E$. The saturation game $(n, {\mathcal P})$ is played as follows. Two players, called Mini and Max, progressively build a graph $G \subseteq K_n$, which does not satisfy ${\mathcal P}$. Starting with the empty graph on $n$ vertices, the two players take turns adding edges $e \in \binom{V(K_n)}{2} \setminus E(G)$, for which $G \cup \{e\} \notin {\mathcal P}$, until no such edge exis…
Given a family ${\mathcal F}$ and a host graph $H$, a graph $G\subseteq H$ is ${\mathcal F}$-saturated relative to $H$ if no subgraph of $G$ lies in ${\mathcal F}$ but adding any edge from $E(H)-E(G)$ to $G$ creates such a subgraph. In the ${\mathcal F}$-saturation game on $H$, players Max and Min alternately add edges of $H$ to $G$, avoiding subgraphs in ${\mathcal F}$, until $G$ becomes ${\mathcal F}$-saturated relative to $H$. They aim to maximize or minimize the length of the game, respectively; $\textrm{sat}_g({\mathcal F};H)$ denotes the length under optimal play (when Max starts). Let $…
A graph $H$ is $K_s$-saturated if it is a maximal $K_s$-free graph, i.e., $H$ contains no clique on $s$ vertices, but the addition of any missing edge creates one. The minimum number of edges in a $K_s$-saturated graph was determined over 50 years ago by Zykov and independently by Erdős, Hajnal and Moon. In this paper, we study the random analog of this problem: minimizing the number of edges in a maximal $K_s$-free subgraph of the Erdős-Rényi random graph $G(n,p)$. We give asymptotically tight estimates on this minimum, and also provide exact bounds for the related notion of weak saturation i…
The saturation number $\text{sat}(n,\mathcal{F})$ is the minimum number of edges in any graph which does not contain a member of $\mathcal{F}$ as a subgraph, but will if any edge is added. We give a few upper and lower bounds for saturation numbers for minors. In particular, we shall show that certain Generalized Petersen Graphs are $K^r$-minor saturated for $6\le r\le 8$.
A 0-1 matrix $M$ contains another 0-1 matrix $P$ if some submatrix of $M$ can be turned into $P$ by changing any number of $1$-entries to $0$-entries. $M$ is $\mathcal{P}$-saturated where $\mathcal{P}$ is a family of 0-1 matrices if $M$ avoids every element of $\mathcal{P}$ and changing any $0$-entry of $M$ to a $1$-entry introduces a copy of some element of $\mathcal{P}$. The extremal function $\operatorname{ex}(n,\mathcal{P})$ and saturation function $\operatorname{sat}(n,\mathcal{P})$ are the maximum and minimum possible weight of an $n\times n$ $\mathcal{P}$-saturated 0-1 matrix, respectiv…
For a given positive integer $k$ we say that a family of subsets of $[n]$ is $k$-antichain saturated if it does not contain $k$ pairwise incomparable sets, but whenever we add to it a new set, we do find $k$ such sets. The size of the smallest such family is denoted by $\text{sat}^*(n, \mathcal A_{k})$. Ferrara, Kay, Kramer, Martin, Reiniger, Smith and Sullivan conjectured that $\text{sat}^*(n, \mathcal A_{k})=(k-1)n(1+o(1))$, and proved this for $k\leq 4$. In this paper we prove this conjecture for $k=5$ and $k=6$. Moreover, we give the exact value for $\text{sat}^*(n, \mathcal A_5)$ and $\te…
A central theorem in combinatorics is Sperner's Theorem, which determines the maximum size of a family $\mathcal{F}\subseteq \mathcal{P}(n)$ that does not contain a $2$-chain $F_1\subsetneq F_2$. Erdős later extended this result and determined the largest family not containing a $k$-chain $F_1\subsetneq \ldots \subsetneq F_k$. Erdős and Katona and later Kleitman asked how many such chains must appear in families whose size is larger than the corresponding extremal result. This question was resolved for $2$-chains by Kleitman in $1966$, who showed that amongst families of size $M$ in $\mathcal{…
Let $r \ge 2$ be a fixed constant and let $ {\mathcal H}$ be an $r$-uniform, $D$-regular hypergraph on $N$ vertices. Assume further that $ D \to \infty$ as $N \to \infty$ and that degrees of pairs of vertices in ${\mathcal H}$ are at most $L$ where $L \ = D/ (\log N)^{ω(1)}$. We consider the random greedy algorithm for forming a matching in $ \mathcal{H}$. We choose a matching at random by iteratively choosing edges uniformly at random to be in the matching and deleting all edges that share at least one vertex with a chosen edge before moving on to the next choice. This process terminates when…
Felsner, Hurtado, Noy and Streinu (2000) conjectured that arrangement graphs of simple great-circle arrangements have chromatic number at most $3$. Motivated by this conjecture, we study the colorability of arrangement graphs for different classes of arrangements of (pseudo-)circles. In this paper the conjecture is verified for $\triangle$-saturated pseudocircle arrangements, i.e., for arrangements where one color class of the 2-coloring of faces consists of triangles only, as well as for further classes of (pseudo-)circle arrangements. These results are complemented by a construction which ma…
