A Latin square of order $n$ is an $n \times n$ array filled with $n$ symbols such that each symbol appears only once in every row or column and a transversal is a collection of cells which do not share the same row, column or symbol. The study of Latin squares goes back more than 200 years to the work of Euler. One of the most famous open problems in this area is a conjecture of Ryser-Brualdi-Stein from 60s which says that every Latin square of order $n\times n$ contains a transversal of order $n-1$. In this paper we prove the existence of a transversal of order $n-O(\log{n}/\log{\log{n}})$, improving the celebrated bound of $n-O(\log^2n)$ by Hatami and Shor. Our approach (different from that of Hatami-Shor) is quite general and gives several other applications as well. We obtain a new lower bound on a 40 year old conjecture of Brouwer on the maximum matching in Steiner triple systems, showing that every such system of order $n$ is guaranteed to have a matching of size $n/3-O(\log{n}/\log{\log{n}})$. This substantially improves the current best result of Alon, Kim and Spencer which has the error term of order $n^{1/2+o(1)}$. Finally, we also show that $O(n\log{n}/\log{\log{n}})$ many symbols in Latin arrays suffice to guarantee a full transversal, improving on previously known bound of $n^{2-\varepsilon}$. The proofs combine in a novel way the semirandom method together with the robust expansion properties of edge coloured pseudorandom graphs to show the existence of a rainbow matching covering all but $O(\log n/\log{\log{n}})$ vertices. All previous results, based on the semi-random method, left uncovered at least $Ω(n^α)$ (for some constant $α$) vertices.
A Ryser design $\mathcal{D}$ on $v$ points is a collection of $v$ proper subsets (called blocks) of a point-set with $v$ points satisfying (i) every two blocks intersect each other in $λ$ points for a fixed $λ< v$ (ii) there are at least two block sizes. A design $\mathcal{D}$ is called a symmetric design, if all the blocks of $\mathcal{D}$ have the same size (or equivalently, every point has the same replication number) and every two blocks intersect each other in $λ$ points. The only known construction of a Ryser design is via block complementation of a symmetric design also known as the Rys…
Ryser's Conjecture states that for any $r$-partite $r$-uniform hypergraph, the vertex cover number is at most $r{-}1$ times the matching number. This conjecture is only known to be true for $r\leq 3$ in general and for $r\leq 5$ if the hypergraph is intersecting. There has also been considerable effort made for finding hypergraphs that are extremal for Ryser's Conjecture, i.e. $r$-partite hypergraphs whose cover number is $r-1$ times its matching number. Aside from a few sporadic examples, the set of uniformities $r$ for which Ryser's Conjecture is known to be tight is limited to those integer…
A Ryser design $\mathcal{D}$ on $v$ points is a collection of $v$ proper subsets (called blocks) of a point-set with $v$ points such that every two blocks intersect each other in $λ$ points (and $λ< v$ is a fixed number) and there are at least two block sizes. A design $\mathcal{D}$ is called a symmetric design, if every point of $\mathcal{D}$ has the same replication number (or equivalently, all the blocks have the same size) and every two blocks intersect each other in $λ$ points. The only known construction of a Ryser design is via block complementation of a symmetric design. Such a Ryser d…
Ryser's conjecture says that for every $r$-partite hypergraph $H$ with matching number $ν(H)$, the vertex cover number is at most $(r-1)ν(H)$. This far reaching generalization of König's theorem is only known to be true for $r\leq 3$, or $ν(G)=1$ and $r\leq 5$. An equivalent formulation of Ryser's conjecture is that in every $r$-edge coloring of a graph $G$ with independence number $α(G)$, there exists at most $(r-1)α(G)$ monochromatic connected subgraphs which cover the vertex set of $G$. We make the case that this latter formulation of Ryser's conjecture naturally leads to a variety of stron…
In this paper we consider a natural extremal graph theoretic problem of topological sort, concerning the minimization of the (topological) connectedness of the independence complex of graphs in terms of its dimension. We observe that the lower bound $\frac{\dim(\mathcal{I}(G))}{2} - 2$ on the connectedness of the independence complex $\mathcal{I}(G)$ of line graphs of bipartite graphs $G$ is tight. In our main theorem we characterize the extremal examples. Our proof of this characterization is based on topological machinery. Our motivation for studying this problem comes from a classical conje…
Ryser's Conjecture states that for any $r$-partite $r$-uniform hypergraph the vertex cover number is at most $r-1$ times the matching number. This conjecture is only known to be true for $r\leq 3$. For intersecting hypergraphs, Ryser's Conjecture reduces to saying that the edges of every $r$-partite intersecting hypergraph can be covered by $r-1$ vertices. This special case of the conjecture has only been proven for $r \leq 5$. It is interesting to study hypergraphs which are extremal in Ryser's Conjecture i.e, those hypergraphs for which the vertex cover number is exactly $r-1$ times the matc…
A famous conjecture (usually called Ryser's conjecture) that appeared in the Ph.D thesis of his student, J.~R.~Henderson [15], states that for an $r$-uniform $r$-partite hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$, the inequality $τ(\mathcal{H})\le(r-1)\cdot ν(\mathcal{H})$ always holds. This conjecture is widely open, except in the case of $r=2$, when it is equivalent to K\H onig's theorem [18], and in the case of $r=3$, which was proved by Aharoni in 2001 [3]. Here we study some special cases of Ryser's conjecture. First of all the most studied special case is when $\mathcal{H}$ is intersecting. Even for this …
Ryser conjectured that $τ\le(r-1)ν$ for $r$-partite hypergraphs, where $τ$ is the covering number and $ν$ is the matching number. We prove this conjecture for $r\le9$ in the special case of linear intersecting hypergraphs, in other words where every pair of lines meets in exactly one vertex. Aharoni formulated a stronger version of Ryser's conjecture which specified that each $r$-partite hypergraph should have a cover of size $(r-1)ν$ of a particular form. We provide a counterexample to Aharoni's conjecture with $r=13$ and $ν=1$. We also report a number of computational results. For $r=7$, we …
A famous conjecture of Ryser is that in an $r$-partite hypergraph the covering number is at most $r-1$ times the matching number. If true, this is known to be sharp for $r$ for which there exists a projective plane of order $r-1$. We show that the conjecture, if true, is also sharp for the smallest previously open value, namely $r=7$. For $r\in\{6,7\}$, we find the minimal number $f(r)$ of edges in an intersecting $r$-partite hypergraph that has covering number at least $r-1$. We find that $f(r)$ is achieved only by linear hypergraphs for $r\le5$, but that this is not the case for $r\in\{6,7\}…
We show that an $n\times n$ circulant Hadamard matrix must satisfy a family of congruence equations that have solutions only when $n \leq 4$, proving Ryser's 1963 conjecture that no such matrices exist for $n>4$.
A Ryser design $\mathcal{D}$ on $v$ points is a collection of $v$ proper subsets (called blocks) of a point-set with $v$ points such that every two blocks intersect each other in $λ$ points (and $λ< v$ is a fixed number) and there are at least two block sizes. A design $\mathcal{D}$ is called a symmetric design, if every point of $\mathcal{D}$ has the same replication number (or equivalently, all the blocks have the same size) and every two blocks intersect each other in $λ$ points. The only known construction of a Ryser design is via block complementation of a symmetric design. Such a Ryser d…
Let $τ(\mathcal{H})$ be the cover number and $ν(\mathcal{H})$ be the matching number of a hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$. Ryser conjectured that every $r$-partite hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$ satisfies the inequality $τ(\mathcal{H}) \leq (r-1) ν(\mathcal{H})$. This conjecture is open for all $r \ge 4$. For intersecting hypergraphs, namely those with $ν(\mathcal{H})=1$, Ryser's conjecture reduces to $τ(\mathcal{H}) \leq r-1$. Even this conjecture is extremely difficult and is open for all $ r \ge 6$. For infinitely many $r$ there are examples of intersecting $r$-partite hypergraphs with $τ(\mathcal{H})=r…
Ryser's Conjecture states that any $r$-partite $r$-uniform hypergraph has a vertex cover of size at most $r - 1$ times the size of the largest matching. For $r = 2$, the conjecture is simply König's Theorem and every bipartite graph is a witness for its tightness. The conjecture has also been proven for $r = 3$ by Aharoni using topological methods, but the proof does not give information on the extremal $3$-uniform hypergraphs. Our goal in this paper is to characterize those hypergraphs which are tight for Aharoni's Theorem. Our proof of this characterization is also based on topological machi…
Two prominent conjectures by Herbert J. Ryser have been falsely attributed to a somewhat obscure conference proceedings that he wrote in German. Here we provide a translation of that paper and try to correct the historical record at least as far as what was conjectured in it. The two conjectures relate to transversals in Latin squares of odd order and to the relationship between the covering number and the matching number of multipartite hypergraphs.
A famous conjecture of Ryser states that any $r$-partite set system has transversal number at most $r-1$ times their matching number. This conjecture is only known to be true for $r\leq3$ in general, for $r\leq5$ if the set system is intersecting, and for $r\leq9$ if the intersecting set system is linear. In this note, we deal with Ryser's Conjecture for intersecting $r$-partite linear systems; that is, if $τ$ is the transversal number for an intersecting $r$-partite linear system, then Ryser's Conjecture states that $τ\leq r-1$. If this conjecture is true, this is known to be sharp for $r$ fo…
A rainbow matching for (not necessarily distinct) sets F_1,...,F_k of hypergraph edges is a matching consisting of k edges, one from each F_i. The aim of the paper is twofold - to put order in the multitude of conjectures that relate to this concept (some of them first presented here), and to present some partial results on one of these conjectures, that seems central among them.
A well-known conjecture, often attributed to Ryser, states that the cover number of an $r$-partite $r$-uniform hypergraph is at most $r - 1$ times larger than its matching number. Despite considerable effort, particularly in the intersecting case, this conjecture remains wide open, motivating the pursuit of variants of the original conjecture. Recently, Bustamante and Stein and, independently, Király and Tóthmérész considered the problem under the assumption that the hypergraph is $t$-intersecting, conjecturing that the cover number $τ(\mathcal{H})$ of such a hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$ is at mos…
In this note we prove the conjecture of \cite{HaWiWi} that every bipartite multigraph with integer edge delays admits an edge colouring with $d+1$ colours in the special case where $d=3$. A connection to the Brualdi-Ryser-Stein conjecture is discussed.
We address an old (1977) conjecture of a subset of the authors (a variant of Ryser's conjecture): in every r-coloring of the edges of a biclique [A,B] (complete bipartite graph), the vertex set can be covered by the vertices of at most 2r-2 monochromatic connected components. We reduce this conjecture to design-like conjectures, where the monochromatic components of the color classes are bicliques [X,Y] with nonempty blocks X and Y. We prove this conjecture for r<6. We show that the width (the number of bicliques) in every color class of any spanning r-coloring is at most 2^{r-1} (and this is …
We suggest and explore a matroidal version of the Brualdi - Ryser conjecture about Latin squares. We prove that any $n\times n$ matrix, whose rows and columns are bases of a matroid, has an independent partial transversal of length $\lceil2n/3\rceil$. We show that for any $n$, there exists such a matrix with a maximal independent partial transversal of length at most $n-1$.
In this paper, we first present the relation between a transversal in a Latin square with some concepts in its Latin square graph, and give an equivalent condition for a Latin square has an orthogonal mate. The most famous open problem involving Combinatorics is to find maximum number of disjoint transversals in a Latin square. So finding some family of decomposable Latin squares into disjoint transversals is our next aim. In the next section, we give an equivalent statement of a conjecture which has been attributed to Brualdi, Stein and Ryser by the concept of quasi-transversal. Finally, we p…
Gyárfás and Sárközy conjectured that every $n\times n$ Latin square has a `cycle-free' partial transversal of size $n-2$. We confirm this conjecture in a strong sense for almost all Latin squares, by showing that as $n \rightarrow \infty$, all but a vanishing proportion of $n\times n$ Latin squares have a Hamilton transversal, i.e. a full transversal for which any proper subset is cycle-free. In fact, we prove a counting result that in almost all Latin squares, the number of Hamilton transversals is essentially that of Taranenko's upper bound on the number of full transversals. This result str…
In a latin square of order $n$, a near transversal is a collection of $n-1$ cells which intersects each row, column, and symbol class at most once. A longstanding conjecture of Brualdi, Ryser, and Stein asserts that every latin square possesses a near transversal. We show that this conjecture is true for every latin square that is main class equivalent to the Cayley table of a finite group.
This note collects some results and conjectures for the generating functions of the Hankel determinants of certain polynomials which are related to Motzkin paths.
Consider a graph obtained by taking edge disjoint union of $k$ complete bipartite graphs. Alon, Saks and Seymour conjectured that such graph has chromatic number at most $k+1$. This well known conjecture remained open for almost twenty years. In this paper, we construct a counterexample to this conjecture and discuss several related problems in combinatorial geometry and communication complexity.
This paper is an attempt to survey the current state of our knowledge on the Caccetta-Haggkvist conjecture and related questions. In January 2006 there was a workshop hosted by the American Institute of Mathematics in Palo Alto, on the Caccetta-Haggkvist conjecture, and this paper partly originated there, as a summary of the open problems and partial results presented at the workshop. This summary includes results and open problems related to Caccetta-Haggkvist, Seymour's Second Neighborhood Conjecture, the k/2 Conjecture (for nonedges), and connections with algebraic number theory through Cay…
We compute the spectrum and Smith normal form of the incidence matrix of disjoint transversals, a combinatorial object closely related to the n-dimensional case of Rota's basis conjecture.
On a group ring identity related to the Alon-Jaeger-Tarsi conjecture
Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics（阿尔弗雷德·雷尼数学研究所）；HUN-REN Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics（匈牙利研究与创新网络阿尔弗雷德·雷尼数学研究所）；Budapest University of Technology and Economics（布达佩斯技术与经济大学）；Institute for Basic Science (IBS)（韩国基础科学研究院）
In this paper we consider properly edge-colored graphs, i.e. two edges with the same color cannot share an endpoint, so each color class is a matching. A matching is called \it rainbow \rm if its edges have different colors. The minimum degree of a graph is denoted by $δ(G)$. We show that properly edge colored graphs $G$ with $|V(G)|\ge 4δ(G)-3$ have rainbow matchings of size $δ(G)$, this gives the best known estimate to a recent question of Wang. Since one obviously needs at least $2δ(G)$ vertices to guarantee a rainbow matching of size $δ(G)$, we investigate what happens when $|V(G)|\ge 2δ(G…
In 1998 Manickam and Singhi conjectured that for every positive integer $d$ and every $n \ge 4d$, every set of $n$ real numbers whose sum is nonnegative contains at least $\binom {n-1}{d-1}$ subsets of size $d$ whose sums are nonnegative. In this paper we establish new results related to this conjecture. We also prove that the conjecture of Manickam and Singhi does not hold for $n=2d+2$.
Thomassen formulated the following conjecture: Every $3$-connected cubic graph has a red-blue vertex coloring such that the blue subgraph has maximum degree $1$ (that is, it consists of a matching and some isolated vertices) and the red subgraph has minimum degree at least $1$ and contains no $3$-edge path. We prove the conjecture for Generalized Petersen graphs. We indicate that a coloring with the same properties might exist for any subcubic graph. We confirm this statement for all subcubic trees.
In a recent work, Andrews gave analytic proofs of two conjectures concerning some variations of two combinatorial identities between partitions of a positive integer into odd parts and partitions into distinct parts discovered by Beck. Subsequently, using the same method as Andrews, Chern presented the analytic proof of another Beck's conjecture relating the gap-free partitions and distinct partitions with odd length. However, the combinatorial interpretations of these conjectures are still unclear and required. In this paper, motivated by Glaisher's bijection, we give the combinatorial proofs…
In 1994, it was conjectured by Fan and Raspaud that every simple bridgeless cubic graph has three perfect matchings whose intersection is empty. In this paper we answer a question recently proposed by Mkrtchyan and Vardanyan, by giving an equivalent formulation of the Fan-Raspaud Conjecture. We also study a possibly weaker conjecture originally proposed by the first author, which states that in every simple bridgeless cubic graph there exist two perfect matchings such that the complement of their union is a bipartite graph. Here, we show that this conjecture can be equivalently stated using a …
The Kolakoski sequence is the unique infinite sequence with values in $\{1, 2\}$ and first term twems $1, 2, \ldots$ which equals the sequence of run-lengths of itself, we call this $K(1, 2).$ We define $K(m, n)$ similarly for $m+n$ odd. A well-known open problem is that its limiting density is one-half. Indeed, not much is known about the Kolakoski sequence. The focus of this paper in on conjectures related to the Kolakoski sequence which are more discrete in nature. We conjecture that a certain doubly infinite family of finite sequences $E_{1, n}\left(1^{2^j}, 1^{2j}\right)$ has odd length f…
The Delta Conjecture of Haglund, Remmel, and Wilson is a recent generalization of the Shuffle Conjecture in the field of diagonal harmonics. In this paper we give evidence for the Delta Conjecture by proving a pair of conjectures of Wilson and Haglund-Remmel-Wilson which give equidistribution results for statistics related to inversion count and major index on objects related to ordered set partitions. Our results generalize the famous result of MacMahon that major index and inversion number share the same distribution on permutations.
Mathematics Institute, University of Warwick（华威大学数学研究所）；Department of Computer Science, ETH Zürich（苏黎世联邦理工学院计算机科学系）；Department of Mathematics, ETH Zürich（苏黎世联邦理工学院数学系）
本文肯定回答等 n 方阵是否总有近似完全横截的问题，同时改进存在性反例界与普适的近乎完全互不相交横截界。
The purpose of this paper is to find a new way to prove the $n!$ conjecture for particular partitions. The idea is to construct a monomial and explicit basis for the space $M_μ$. We succeed completely for hook-shaped partitions, i.e., $μ=(K+1,1^L)$. We are able to exhibit a basis and to verify that its cardinality is indeed $n!$, that it is linearly independent and that it spans $M_μ$. We derive from this study an explicit and simple basis for $I_μ$, the annihilator ideal of $Δ_μ$. This method is also successful for giving directly a basis for the homogeneous subspace of $M_μ$ consisting of el…
We prove a characterization of freeness, conjectured by Athanasiadis, for the family of hyperplane arrangements which lie between the Coxeter and the Catalan arrangement of type $A_\ell$. One direction was already proved in [2]. Here we prove the other direction
In 2012 Bryson, Ono, Pitman and Rhoades showed how the generating functions for certain strongly unimodal sequences are related to quantum modular and mock modular forms. They proved some parity results and conjectured some mod 4 congruences for the coefficients of these generating functions. In 2016 Kim, Lim and Lovejoy obtained similar results for odd-balanced unimodal sequences and made similar mod 4 conjectures. We prove all of these mod 4 conjectures and similar congruences for the Andrews spt-function and related mock theta functions. Our method of proof involves new Hecke-Rogers type id…
Using equivariant obstruction theory we construct equivariant maps from certain classifying spaces to representation spheres for cyclic groups, product of elementary Abelian groups and dihedral groups. Restricting them to finite skeleta constructs equivariant maps between spaces which are related to the topological Tverberg conjecture. This answers negatively a question of Özaydin posed in relation to weaker versions of the same conjecture. Further, it also has consequences for Borsuk-Ulam properties of representations of cyclic and dihedral groups.
In this work we discuss whether the non-commuting graph of a finite group can determine its nilpotency. More precisely, Abdollahi, Akbari and Maimani conjectured that if $G$ and $H$ are finite groups with isomorphic non-commuting graphs and $G$ is nilpotent, then $H$ must be nilpotent as well (Conjecture 2). We pose a new conjecture (Conjecture 3) that, together with the assumption $|Z(G)|\geq|Z(H)|$, implies Conjecture 2 and we prove it for groups in which all centralizers of non-central elements are abelian.
Let $a,b$ and $n$ be positive integers with $a>b$. In this note, we prove that $$(2bn+1)(2bn+3){2bn \choose bn}\bigg|3(a-b)(3a-b){2an \choose an}{an\choose bn}.$$ This confirms a recent conjecture of Amdeberhan and Moll.
Using the following $_4F_3$ transformation formula $$ \sum_{k=0}^{n}{-x-1\choose k}^2{x\choose n-k}^2=\sum_{k=0}^{n}{n+k\choose 2k}{2k\choose k}^2{x+k\choose 2k}, $$ which can be proved by Zeilberger's algorithm, we confirm some special cases of a recent conjecture of Z.-W. Sun on integer-valued polynomials.
Lights Out! is a game played on a $5 \times 5$ grid of lights, or more generally on a graph. Pressing lights on the grid allows the player to turn off neighboring lights. The goal of the game is to start with a given initial configuration of lit lights and reach a state where all lights are out. Two conjectures posed in a recently published paper about Lights Out! on Cartesian products of graphs are resolved.
