Considering a natural generalization of the Ruzsa-Szemerédi problem, we prove that for any fixed positive integers $r,s$ with $r<s$, there are graphs on $n$ vertices containing $n^{r}e^{-O(\sqrt{\log{n}})}=n^{r-o(1)}$ copies of $K_s$ such that any $K_r$ is contained in at most one $K_s$. We also give bounds for the generalized rainbow Turán problem $\operatorname{ex}(n, H,$rainbow-$F)$ when $F$ is complete. In particular, we answer a question of Gerbner, Mészáros, Methuku and Palmer, showing that there are properly edge-coloured graphs on $n$ vertices with $n^{r-1-o(1)}$ copies of $K_r$ such that no $K_r$ is rainbow.
Starting from an innocent Ramsey-theoretic question regarding directed paths in tournaments, we discover a series of rich and surprising connections that lead into the theory around a fundamental problem in Combinatorics: the Ruzsa-Szemerédi induced matching problem. Using these relationships, we prove that every coloring of the edges of the transitive $n$-vertex tournament using three colors contains a directed path of length at least $\sqrt{n} \cdot e^{\log^* n}$ which entirely avoids some color. We also expose connections to a family of constructions for Ramsey tournaments, and introduce an…
We describe algorithmic Number On the Forehead protocols that provide dense Ruzsa-Szemerédi graphs. One protocol leads to a simple and natural extension of the original construction of Ruzsa and Szemerédi. The graphs induced by this protocol have $n$ vertices, $Ω(n^2/\log n)$ edges, and are decomposable into $n^{1+O(1/\log \log n)}$ induced matchings. Another protocol is an explicit (and slightly simpler) version of the construction of Alon, Moitra and Sudakov, producing graphs with similar properties. We also generalize the above protocols to more than three players, in order to construct den…
We construct large subsets of the first $N$ positive integers which avoid certain arithmetic configurations. In particular, we construct a set of order $N^{0.7685}$ lacking the configuration $\{x,x+y,x+y^2\},$ surpassing the $N^{3/4}$ limit of Ruzsa's construction for sets lacking a square difference. We also extend Ruzsa's construction to sets lacking polynomial differences for a wide class of univariate polynomials. Finally, we turn to multivariate differences, constructing a set of order $N^{1/2}$ lacking a difference equal to a sum of two squares. This is in contrast to the analogous probl…
We develop the Plünnecke-Ruzsa and Balog-Szemerédi-Gowers theory of sum set estimates in the non-commutative setting, with discrete, continuous, and metric entropy formulations of these estimates. We also develop a Freiman-type inverse theorem for a special class of 2-step nilpotent groups, namely the Heisenberg groups with no 2-torsion in their centre.
The basic theme of this paper is the fact that if $A$ is a finite set of integers, then the sum and product sets cannot both be small. A precise formulation of this fact is Conjecture 1 below due to Erd\H os-Szemerédi [E-S]. (see also [El], [T], and [K-T] for related aspects.) Only much weaker results or very special cases of this conjecture are presently known. One approach consists of assuming the sum set $A + A$ small and then deriving that the product set $AA$ is large (using Freiman's structure theorem). (cf [N-T], [Na3].) We follow the reverse route and prove that if $|AA| < c|A|$, then …
We consider a natural generalisation of Turán's forbidden subgraph problem and the Ruzsa-Szemerédi problem by studying the maximum number $ex_F(n,G)$ of edge-disjoint copies of a fixed graph $F$ can be placed on an $n$-vertex ground set without forming a subgraph $G$ whose edges are from different $F$-copies. We determine the pairs $\{F, G\}$ for which the order of magnitude of $ex_F(n,G)$ is quadratic and prove several asymptotic results using various tools from the regularity lemma and supersaturation to graph packing results.
The Turán number of a graph $H$, denoted $\mbox{ex}(n,H)$, is the maximum number of edges in an $n$-vertex graph with no subgraph isomorphic to $H$. Solymosi conjectured that if $H$ is any graph and $\mbox{ex}(n,H) = O(n^α)$ where $α> 1$, then any $n$-vertex graph with the property that each edge lies in exactly one copy of $H$ has $o(n^α)$ edges. This can be viewed as conjecturing a possible extension of the removal lemma to sparse graphs, and is well-known to be true when $H$ is a non-bipartite graph, in particular when $H$ is a triangle, due to Ruzsa and Szemerédi. Using Sidon sets we exhib…
A seminal result of Hajnal and Szemerédi states that if a graph $G$ with $n$ vertices has minimum degree $δ(G) \ge (r-1)n/r$ for some integer $r \ge 2$, then $G$ contains a $K_r$-factor, assuming $r$ divides $n$. Extremal examples which show optimality of the bound on $δ(G)$ are very structured and, in particular, contain large independent sets. In analogy to the Ramsey-Turán theory, Balogh, Molla, and Sharifzadeh initiated the study of how the absence of such large independent sets influences sufficient minimum degree. We show the following two related results: $\bullet$ For any $r > \ell \ge…
The following sharpening of Turán's theorem is proved. Let $T_{n,p}$ denote the complete $p$--partite graph of order $n$ having the maximum number of edges. If $G$ is an $n$-vertex $K_{p+1}$-free graph with $e(T_{n,p})-t$ edges then there exists an (at most) $p$-chromatic subgraph $H_0$ such that $e(H_0)\geq e(G)-t$. Using this result we present a concise, contemporary proof (i.e., one applying Szemerédi's regularity lemma) for the classical stability result of Simonovits.
Nielsen proved that the maximum number of maximal independent sets (MIS's) of size $k$ in an $n$-vertex graph is asymptotic to $(n/k)^k$, with the extremal construction a disjoint union of $k$ cliques with sizes as close to $n/k$ as possible. In this paper we study how many MIS's of size $k$ an $n$-vertex graph $G$ can have if $G$ does not contain a clique $K_t$. We prove for all fixed $k$ and $t$ that there exist such graphs with $n^{\lfloor\frac{(t-2)k}{t-1}\rfloor-o(1)}$ MIS's of size $k$ by utilizing recent work of Gowers and B. Janzer on a generalization of the Ruzsa-Szemerédi problem. We…
The first application of Szemerédi's powerful regularity method was the following celebrated Ramsey-Turán result proved by Szemerédi in 1972: any K_4-free graph on N vertices with independence number o(N) has at most (1/8 + o(1)) N^2 edges. Four years later, Bollobás and Erdős gave a surprising geometric construction, utilizing the isoperimetric inequality for the high dimensional sphere, of a K_4-free graph on N vertices with independence number o(N) and (1/8 - o(1)) N^2 edges. Starting with Bollobás and Erdős in 1976, several problems have been asked on estimating the minimum possible indepe…
Suppose one needs to change the direction of at least $εn^2$ edges of an $n$-vertex tournament $T$, in order to make it $H$-free. A standard application of the regularity method shows that in this case $T$ contains at least $f^*_H(ε)n^h$ copies of $H$, where $f^*_H$ is some tower-type function. It has long been observed that many graph/digraph problems become easier when assuming that the host graph is a tournament. It is thus natural to ask if the removal lemma becomes easier if we assume that the digraph $G$ is a tournament. Our main result here is a precise characterization of the tournamen…
We study thresholds for extremal properties of random discrete structures. We determine the threshold for Szemerédi's theorem on arithmetic progressions in random subsets of the integers and its multidimensional extensions and we determine the threshold for Turán-type problems for random graphs and hypergraphs. In particular, we verify a conjecture of Kohayakawa, Łuczak, and Rödl for Turán-type problems in random graphs. Similar results were obtained by Conlon and Gowers.
In this paper we study Turán and Ramsey numbers in linear triple systems, defined as $3$-uniform hypergraphs in which any two triples intersect in at most one vertex. A famous result of Ruzsa and Szemerédi is that for any fixed $c>0$ and large enough $n$ the following Turán-type theorem holds. If a linear triple system on $n$ vertices has at least $cn^2$ edges then it contains a {\em triangle}: three pairwise intersecting triples without a common vertex. In this paper we extend this result from triangles to other triple systems, called {\em $s$-configurations}. The main tool is a generalizatio…
Let r be an integer, f(n) a function, and H a graph. Introduced by Erdős, Hajnal, Sós, and Szemerédi, the r-Ramsey-Turán number of H, RT_r(n, H, f(n)), is defined to be the maximum number of edges in an n-vertex, H-free graph G with α_r(G) <= f(n) where α_r(G) denotes the K_r-independence number of G. In this note, using isoperimetric properties of the high dimensional unit sphere, we construct graphs providing lower bounds for RT_r(n,K_{r+s},o(n)) for every 2 <= s <= r. These constructions are sharp for an infinite family of pairs of r and s. The only previous sharp construction was by Bollob…
In a seminal paper from 1983, Burr and Erdos started the systematic study of Ramsey numbers of cliques vs. large sparse graphs, raising a number of problems. In this paper we develop a new approach to such Ramsey problems using a mix of the Szemeredi regularity lemma, embedding of sparse graphs, Turan type stability, and other structural results. We give exact Ramsey numbers for various classes of graphs, solving all but one of the Burr-Erdos problems.
Let t be an integer, f(n) a function, and H a graph. Define the t-Ramsey-Turán number of H, RT_t(n, H, f(n)), to be the maximum number of edges in an n-vertex, H-free graph G where f(n) is larger than the maximum number of vertices in a $K_t$-free induced subgraph of G. Erdős, Hajnal, Simonovits, Sós, and Szemerédi posed several open questions about RT_t(n,K_s,o(n)), among them finding the minimum s such that $RT_t(n,K_{t+s},o(n)) = Ω(n^2)$, where it is easy to see that $RT_t(n,K_{t+1},o(n)) = o(n^2)$. In this paper, we answer this question by proving that $RT_t(n,K_{t+2},o(n)) = Ω(n^2)$; our …
Much of extremal graph theory has concentrated either on finding very small subgraphs of a large graph (Turan-type results) or on finding spanning subgraphs (Dirac-type results). In this paper we are interested in finding intermediate-sized subgraphs. We investigate minimum degree conditions under which a graph G contains squared paths and squared cycles of arbitrary specified lengths. We determine precise thresholds, assuming that the order of G is large. This extends results of Fan and Kierstead [J. Combin. Theory Ser. B 63 (1995), 55--64] and of Komlos, Sarkozy, and Szemeredi [Random Struct…
Let $f(n)$ be a function and $L$ be a graph. Denote by $RT(n,L,f(n))$ the maximum number of edges of an $L$-free graph on $n$ vertices with independence number less than $f(n)$. Erd\H os and Sós asked if $RT\left(n, K_5, c\sqrt{n}\right) = o(n^2)$ for some constant $c$. We answer this question by proving the stronger $RT\left(n, K_5, o\left(\sqrt{n\log n}\right)\right) = o(n^2)$. It is known that $RT \left(n, K_5, c \sqrt{n\log n} \right) = n^2/4+o(n^2)$ for $c>1$, so one can say that $K_5$ has a Ramsey-Turán phase transition at $c\sqrt{n\log n}$. We extend this result to several other $K_s$'s…
Given a graph $G$ and an integer $\ell\ge 2$, we denote by $α_{\ell}(G)$ the maximum size of a $K_{\ell}$-free subset of vertices in $V(G)$. A recent question of Nenadov and Pehova asks for determining the best possible minimum degree conditions forcing clique-factors in $n$-vertex graphs $G$ with $α_{\ell}(G) = o(n)$, which can be seen as a Ramsey--Turán variant of the celebrated Hajnal--Szemerédi theorem. In this paper we find the asymptotical sharp minimum degree threshold for $K_r$-factors in $n$-vertex graphs $G$ with $α_\ell(G)=n^{1-o(1)}$ for all $r\ge \ell\ge 2$.
The Hajnal--Szemerédi theorem states that for any integer $r \ge 1$ and any multiple $n$ of $r$, if $G$ is a graph on $n$ vertices and $δ(G) \ge (1 - 1/r)n$, then $G$ can be partitioned into $n/r$ vertex-disjoint copies of the complete graph on $r$ vertices. We prove a very general analogue of this result for directed graphs: for any integer $r \ge 4$ and any sufficiently large multiple $n$ of $r$, if $G$ is a directed graph on $n$ vertices and every vertex is incident to at least $2(1 - 1/r)n - 1$ directed edges, then $G$ can be partitioned into $n/r$ vertex-disjoint subgraphs of size $r$ eac…
Separating hash families are useful combinatorial structures which are generalizations of many well-studied objects in combinatorics, cryptography and coding theory. In this paper, using tools from graph theory and additive number theory, we solve several open problems and conjectures concerning bounds and constructions for separating hash families. Firstly, we discover that the cardinality of a separating hash family satisfies a Johnson-type inequality. As a result, we obtain a new upper bound, which is superior to all previous ones. Secondly, we present a construction for an infinite class o…
