For given integers $r$ and $\ell$ such that $2\leqslant\ell\leqslant r-1$, an $r$-uniform hypergraph $H$ is called a partial Steiner $(n,r,\ell)$-system, if every subset of size $\ell$ lies in at most one edge of $H$. In particular, partial Steiner $(n,r,2)$-systems are also called linear hypergraphs. The partial Steiner $(n,r,\ell)$-system process starts with an empty hypergraph on vertex set $[n]$ at time $0$, the $ \binom{n}{r}$ edges arrive one by one according to a uniformly chosen permutation, and each edge is added if and only if it does not overlap any of the previously-added edges in $\ell$ or more vertices. In this paper, we show with high probability, independent of $\ell$, the sharp threshold of connectivity in the algorithm is $ \frac{n}{r}\log n$ and the very edge which links the last isolated vertex with another vertex makes the partial Steiner $(n,r,\ell)$-system connected.
Hypertrees are linear hypergraphs where every two vertices are connected by a unique path. Elliott and Rödl conjectured that for any given $μ>0$, there exists $n_0$ such that the following holds. Every $n$-vertex Steiner triple system contains all hypertrees with at most $(1-μ)n$ vertices whenever $n\geq n_0$. We prove this conjecture.
We introduce an operation of a kind of product which associates with a partial Steiner triple system another partial Steiner triple system, the starting one being a quotient of the result. We discuss relations of our product to some other product-like constructions and prove some preservation/non-preservation theorems. In particular, we show series of anti-Pasch Steiner triple systems which are obtained that way.
A partial Steiner triple system of order n is sequenceable if there is a sequence of length n of its distinct points such that no proper segment of the sequence is a union of point-disjoint blocks. We prove that if a partial Steiner triple system has at most three point-disjoint blocks, then it is sequenceable.
It was proved in 2009 that any partial Steiner triple system of order $u$ has an embedding of order $v$ for each admissible integer $v\geq 2u+1$. This result is best-possible in the sense that, for each $u\geq 9$, there exists a partial Steiner triple system of order $u$ that does not have an embedding of order $v$ for any $v<2u+1$. Many partial Steiner triple systems do have embeddings of orders smaller than $2u+1$, but little has been proved about when these embeddings exist. In this paper we construct embeddings of orders less than $2u+1$ for partial Steiner triple systems with few triples.…
In the paper we study the structure of hyperplanes of so called binomial partial Steiner triple systems (BSTS's, in short) i.e. of configurations with $\binom{n}{2}$ points and $\binom{n}{3}$ lines, each line of the size $3$. Consequently, a BSTS has $n-2$ lines through each of its points.
We prove asymptotic upper bounds on the number of $d$-partitions (paving matroids of fixed rank) and partial Steiner systems (sparse paving matroids of fixed rank), using a mixture of entropy counting, sparse encoding, and the probabilistic method.
For an integer $ρ$ such that $1 \leq ρ\leq v/3$, define $β(ρ,v)$ to be the maximum number of blocks in any partial Steiner triple system on $v$ points in which the maximum partial parallel class has size $ρ$. We obtain lower bounds on $β(ρ,v)$ by giving explicit constructions, and upper bounds on $β(ρ,v)$ result from counting arguments. We show that $β(ρ,v) \in Θ(v)$ if $ρ$ is a constant, and $β(ρ,v) \in Θ(v^2)$ if $ρ= v/c$, where $c$ is a constant. When $ρ$ is a constant, our upper and lower bounds on $β(ρ,v)$ differ by a constant that depends on $ρ$. Finally, we apply our results on $β(ρ,v)$…
Given an STS(v), we ask if there is a permutation of the points of the design such that no $\ell$ consecutive points in this permutation contain a block of the design. Results are obtained in the cases $\ell = 3,4$.
A partial Steiner triple system of order $u$ is a pair $(U,\mathcal{A})$ where $U$ is a set of $u$ elements and $\mathcal{A}$ is a set of triples of elements of $U$ such that any two elements of $U$ occur together in at most one triple. If each pair of elements occur together in exactly one triple it is a Steiner triple system. An embedding of a partial Steiner triple system $(U,\mathcal{A})$ is a (complete) Steiner triple system $(V,\mathcal{B})$ such that $U \subseteq V$ and $\mathcal{A} \subseteq \mathcal{B}$. For a given partial Steiner triple system of order $u$ it is known that an embedd…
We propose a new approach to studies on partial Steiner triple systems consisting in determining complete graphs contained in them. We establish the structure which complete graphs yield in a minimal PSTS that contains them. As a by-product we introduce the notion of a binomial PSTS as a configuration with parameters of a minimal PSTS with a complete subgraph. A representation of binomial PSTS with at least a given number of its maximal complete subgraphs is given in terms of systems of perspectives. Finally, we prove that for each admissible integer there is a binomial PSTS with this number o…
The problem of determining the smallest number of edges, $h(n;\barκ\geq r)$, which guarantees that any graph with $n$ vertices and $h(n;\barκ\geq r)$ edges will contain a pair of vertices joined by $r$ internally disjoint paths was posed by Erdös and Gallai. Bollobás considered the problem of determining the largest number of edges $f(n;\barκ\leq \ell)$ for graphs with $n$ vertices and local connectivity at most $\ell$. One can see that $f(n;\barκ\leq \ell)= h(n;\barκ\geq \ell+1)-1$. These two problems had received a wide attention of many researchers in the last few decades. In the above prob…
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} …
An $\ell$-good sequencing of an STS$(v)$ is a permutation of the points of the design such that no $\ell$ consecutive points in this permutation contain a block of the design. We prove that, for every integer $\ell \geq 3$, there is an $\ell$-good sequencing of any STS$(v)$ provided that $v$ is sufficiently large. We also prove some new nonexistence results for $\ell$-good sequencings of STS$(v)$.
The problem of determining the largest number $f(n;\barκ\leq \ell)$ of edges for graphs with $n$ vertices and maximal local connectivity at most $\ell$ was considered by Bollobás. Li et al. studied the largest number $f(n;\barκ_3\leq2)$ of edges for graphs with $n$ vertices and at most two internally disjoint Steiner trees connecting any three vertices. In this paper, we further study the largest number $f(n;\barκ_k=1)$ of edges for graphs with $n$ vertices and exactly one Steiner tree connecting any $k$ vertices with $k\geq 3$. It turns out that this is not an easy task to finish, not like th…
Bottleneck Steiner networks model energy consumption in wireless ad-hoc networks. The task is to design a network spanning a given set of terminals and at most $k$ Steiner points such that the length of the longest edge is minimised. The problem has been extensively studied for the case where an optimal solution is a tree in the Euclidean plane. However, in order to model a wider range of applications, including fault-tolerant networks, it is necessary to consider multi-connectivity constraints for networks embedded in more general metrics. We show that the $2$-connected bottleneck Steiner net…
A partial Steiner triple system is is $sequenceable$ if the points can be sequenced so that no proper segment can be partitioned into blocks. We show that, if $0 \leq a \leq (n-1)/3$, then there exists a nonsequenceable PSTS$(n)$ of size $\frac{1}{3}\binom{n}{2}-a$, for all $n \equiv 1 \pmod{6}$ except for $n=7$.
In 1973 Erdos asked whether there are n-vertex partial Steiner triple systems with arbitrary high girth and quadratically many triples. (Here girth is defined as the smallest integer g \ge 4 for which some g-element vertex-set contains at least g-2 triples.) We answer this question, by showing existence of approximate Steiner triple systems with arbitrary high girth. More concretely, for any fixed \ell \ge 4 we show that a natural constrained random process typically produces a partial Steiner triple system with (1/6-o(1))n^2 triples and girth larger than \ell. The process iteratively adds ran…
Storage architectures ranging from minimum bandwidth regenerating encoded distributed storage systems to declustered-parity RAIDs can be designed using dense partial Steiner systems in order to support fast reads, writes, and recovery of failed storage units. In order to ensure good performance, popularities of the data items should be taken into account and the frequencies of accesses to the storage units made as uniform as possible. A proposed combinatorial model ranks items by popularity and assigns data items to elements in a dense partial Steiner system so that the sums of ranks of the el…
We introduce two monads on the category of graphs and prove that their Eilenberg-Moore categories are isomorphic to the category of perfect matchings and the category of partial Steiner triple systems, respectively. As a simple application of these results, we describe the product in the categories of perfect matchings and partial Steiner triple systems.
Let $G$ be a connected graph and $\ell : E(G) \to \mathbb{R}^+$ a length-function on the edges of $G$. The Steiner distance $\mathrm{sd}_G(A)$ of $A \subseteq V(G)$ within $G$ is the minimum length of a connected subgraph of $G$ containing $A$, where the length of a subgraph is the sum of the lengths of its edges. It is clear that every subgraph $H \subseteq G$, with the induced length-function $\ell|_{E(H)}$, satisfies $\mathrm{sd}_H(A) \geq \mathrm{sd}_G(A)$ for every $A \subseteq V(H)$. We call $H \subseteq G$ $k$-geodesic in $G$ if equality is attained for every $A \subseteq V(H)$ with $|A…
In this paper we make a partial progress on the following conjecture: for every $μ>0$ and large enough $n$, every Steiner triple system $S$ on at least $(1+μ)n$ vertices contains every hypertree $T$ on $n$ vertices. We prove that the conjecture holds if $T$ is a perfect $d$-ary hypertree.
A set of vertices $S$ of a graph $G$ is a geodetic set of $G$ if every vertex $v\not\in S$ lies on a shortest path between two vertices of $S$. The minimum cardinality of a geodetic set of $G$ is the geodetic number of $G$ and it is denoted by $g(G)$. A Steiner set of $G$ is a set of vertices $W$ of $G$ such that every vertex of $G$ belongs to the set of vertices of a connected subgraph of minimum size containing the vertices of $W$. The minimum cardinality of a Steiner set of $G$ is the Steiner number of $G$ and it is denoted by $s(G)$. Let $G$ and $H$ be two graphs and let $n$ be the order o…
Masbaum and Vaintrob's "Pfaffian matrix tree theorem" implies that counting spanning trees of a 3-uniform hypergraph (abbreviated to 3-graph) can be done in polynomial time for a class of "3-Pfaffian" 3-graphs, comparable to and related to the class of Pfaffian graphs. We prove a complexity result for recognizing a 3-Pfaffian 3-graph and describe two large classes of 3-Pfaffian 3-graphs -- one of these is given by a forbidden subgraph characterization analogous to Little's for bipartite Pfaffian graphs, and the other consists of a class of partial Steiner triple systems for which the property …
The embedding of finite metrics in $\ell_1$ has become a fundamental tool for both combinatorial optimization and large-scale data analysis. One important application is to network flow problems in which there is close relation between max-flow min-cut theorems and the minimal distortion embeddings of metrics into $\ell_1$. Here we show that this theory can be generalized considerably to encompass Steiner tree packing problems in both graphs and hypergraphs. Instead of the theory of $\ell_1$ metrics and minimal distortion embeddings, the parallel is the theory of diversities recently introduce…
Let $G$ be a simple graph with $n$ vertices and list chromatic number $χ_\ell(G)=χ_\ell$. Suppose that $0\leq t\leq χ_\ell$ and each vertex of $G$ is assigned a list of $t$ colors. Albertson, Grossman and Haas [1] conjectured that at least $\frac{tn}{χ_\ell}$ vertices of $G$ can be colored from these lists. In this paper we find some new results in partial list coloring which help us to show that the conjecture is true for at least half of the numbers of the set $\{1,2,...,χ_\ell(G)-1\}$. In addition we introduce a new related conjecture and finally we present some results about this conjectur…
