For every positive integer $t$ we construct a finite family of triple systems ${\mathcal M}_t$, determine its Turán number, and show that there are $t$ extremal ${\mathcal M}_t$-free configurations that are far from each other in edit-distance. We also prove a strong stability theorem: every ${\mathcal M}_t$-free triple system whose size is close to the maximum size is a subgraph of one of these $t$ extremal configurations after removing a small proportion of vertices. This is the first stability theorem for a hypergraph problem with an arbitrary (finite) number of extremal configurations. Moreover, the extremal hypergraphs have very different shadow sizes (unlike the case of the famous Turán tetrahedron conjecture). Hence a corollary of our main result is that the boundary of the feasible region of ${\mathcal M}_t$ has exactly $t$ global maxima.
An ordered hypergraph is a hypergraph whose vertex set is linearly ordered, and a convex geometric hypergraph is a hypergraph whose vertex set is cyclically ordered. Extremal problems for ordered and convex geometric graphs have a rich history with applications to a variety of problems in combinatorial geometry. In this paper, we consider analogous extremal problems for uniform hypergraphs, and determine the order of magnitude of the extremal function for various ordered and convex geometric paths and matchings. Our results generalize earlier works of Braß-Károlyi-Valtr, Capoyleas-Pach and Aro…
A fundamental problem in pattern avoidance is describing the asymptotic behavior of the extremal function and its generalizations. We prove an equivalence between the asymptotics of the graph extremal function for a class of bipartite graphs and the asymptotics of the matrix extremal function. We use the equivalence to prove several new bounds on the extremal functions of graphs. We develop a new method to bound the extremal function of hypergraphs in terms of the extremal function of their associated multidimensional matrices, improving the bound of the extremal function of $d$-permutation hy…
We survey recent advances in the theory of graph and hypergraph decompositions, with a focus on extremal results involving minimum degree conditions. We also collect a number of intriguing open problems, and formulate new ones.
We study sufficient conditions for Hamiltonian cycles in hypergraphs, and obtain both Turán- and Dirac-type results. While the Turán-type result gives an exact threshold for the appearance of a Hamiltonian cycle in a hypergraph depending only on the extremal number of a certain path, the Dirac-type result yields a sufficient condition relying solely on the minimum vertex degree.
Let a 2 to 1 directed hypergraph be a 3-uniform hypergraph where every edge has two tail vertices and one head vertex. For any such directed hypergraph F let the nth extremal number of F be the maximum number of edges that any directed hypergraph on n vertices can have without containing a copy of F. There are actually two versions the directed hypergraph model for this problem: the standard version where every triple of vertices is allowed to have up to all three possible directed edges and the oriented version where each triple can have at most one directed edge. In this paper, we determine …
Let a 2 to 1 directed hypergraph be a 3-uniform hypergraph where every edge has two tail vertices and one head vertex. For any such directed hypergraph F let the nth extremal number of F be the maximum number of edges that any directed hypergraph on n vertices can have without containing a copy of F. There are actually two versions of this problem: the standard version where every triple of vertices is allowed to have up to all three possible directed edges and the oriented version where each triple can have at most one directed edge. In this paper, we determine the standard extremal numbers a…
In 1965 Erdős conjectured that the number of edges in k-uniform hypergraphs on n vertices in which the largest matching has s edges is maximized for hypergraphs of one of two special types. We settled this conjecture in the affirmative for k=3 and n is large enough.
For every integer $t \ge 0$, denote by $F_5^t$ the hypergraph on vertex set $\{1,2,\ldots, 5+t\}$ with hyperedges $\{123,124\} \cup \{34k : 5 \le k \le 5+t\}$. We determine $\mathrm{ex}(n,F_5^t)$ for every $t\ge 0$ and sufficiently large $n$ and characterize the extremal $F_5^t$-free hypergraphs. In particular, if $n$ satisfies certain divisibility conditions, then the extremal $F_5^t$-free hypergraphs are exactly the balanced complete tripartite hypergraphs with additional hyperedges inside each of the three parts $(V_1,V_2,V_3)$ in the partition; each part $V_i$ spans a $(|V_i|,3,2,t)$-desig…
The problem of computing the chromatic number of Kneser hypergraphs has been extensively studied over the last 40 years and the fractional version of the chromatic number of Kneser hypergraphs is only solved for particular cases. The \emph{$(p,q)$-extremal problem} consists in finding the maximum number of edges on a $k$-uniform hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$ with $n$ vertices such that among any $p$ edges some $q$ of them have no empty intersection. In this paper we have found a link between the fractional chromatic number of Kneser hypergraphs and the $(p,q)$-extremal problem and also solve the $(…
In this paper extremal problems for uniform hypergraphs are studied in the general setting of hereditary properties. It turns out that extremal problems about edges are particular cases of a general analyic problem about a recently introduced graph parameter. The paper builds a basis for the systematic study of this parameter and illustrates a range of various proof tools. It is shown that extremal problems about the number of edges of uniform hypergraphs are asymptotically equivalent to extremal problems about the largest eigenvalue; this result is new even for 2-graphs. Several concrete prob…
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…
An ordered hypergraph is a hypergraph whose vertex set is linearly ordered, and a convex geometric hypergraph is a hypergraph whose vertex set is cyclically ordered. Extremal problems for ordered and convex geometric graphs have a rich history with applications to a variety of problems in combinatorial geometry. In this paper, we consider analogous extremal problems for uniform hypergraphs, and discover a general partitioning phenomenon which allows us to determine the order of magnitude of the extremal function for various ordered and convex geometric hypergraphs. A special case is the ordere…
In 1991, McKay and Radziszowski proved that, however each 3-subset of a 13-set is assigned one of two colours, there is some 4-subset whose four 3-subsets have the same colour. More than 25 years later, this remains the only non-trivial classical Ramsey number known for hypergraphs. In this article, we find all the extremal colourings of the 3-subsets of a 12-set and list some of their properties. Using the catalogue, we provide an answer to a question of Dudek, Fleur, Mubayi and Rödl about the size-Ramsey numbers of hypergraphs.
We investigate extremal functions ex_e(F,n) and ex_i(F,n) counting maximum numbers of edges and maximum numbers of vertex-edge incidences in simple hypergraphs H which have n vertices and do not contain a fixed hypergraph F; the containment respects linear orderings of vertices. We determine both functions exactly if F has only distinct singleton edges or if F is one of the 55 hypergraphs with at most four incidences (we give proofs only for six cases). We prove some exact formulae and recurrences for the numbers of hypergraphs, simple and all, with n incidences and derive rough logarithmic as…
We consider $4$-uniform hypergraphs with the maximum number of hyperedges subject to the condition that every set of $5$ vertices spans either $0$ or exactly $2$ hyperedges and give a construction, using quadratic residues, for an infinite family of such hypergraphs with the maximum number of hyperedges. Baber has previously given an asymptotically best-possible result using random tournaments. We give a connection between Baber's result and our construction via Paley tournaments and investigate a `switching' operation on tournaments that preserves hypergraphs arising from this construction.
A fundamental barrier in extremal hypergraph theory is the presence of many near-extremal constructions with very different structures. Indeed, the classical constructions due to Kostochka imply that the notorious extremal problem for the tetrahedron exhibits this phenomenon assuming Turán's conjecture. Our main result is to construct a finite family of triple systems $\mathcal{M}$, determine its Turán number, and prove that there are two near-extremal $\mathcal{M}$-free constructions that are far from each other in edit-distance. This is the first extremal result for a hypergraph family that …
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…
Let $F$ be a graph. A hypergraph is called Berge $F$ if it can be obtained by replacing each edge in $F$ by a hyperedge containing it. Given a family of graphs $\mathcal{F}$, we say that a hypergraph $H$ is Berge $\mathcal{F}$-free if for every $F \in \mathcal{F}$, the hypergraph $H$ does not contain a Berge $F$ as a subhypergraph. In this paper we investigate the connections between spectral radius of the adjacency tensor and structural properties of a linear hypergraph. In particular, we obtain a spectral version of Turán-type problems over linear $k$-uniform hypergraphs by using spectral me…
In this paper we consider spectral extremal problems for hypergraphs. We give two general criteria under which such results may be deduced from `strong stability' forms of the corresponding (pure) extremal results. These results hold for the α-spectral radius defined using the α-norm for any α>1; the usual spectrum is the case α=2. Our results imply that any hypergraph Turán problem which has the stability property and whose extremal construction satisfies some rather mild continuity assumptions admits a corresponding spectral result. A particular example is to determine the maximum α-spectral…
One of possible interpretations of the well-known König--Hall--Egerváry theorem is a full characterization of all bipartite graphs extremal for fractional matchings of a given weight (or, equivalently, a characterization of $(0,1)$-matrices extremal for partial fractional diagonals of a given length). In this paper we initiate the study of $d$-partite $d$-uniform hypergraphs that are extremal for fractional perfect matchings (or, equivalently, $d$-dimensional $(0,1)$-matrices that are extremal for polydiagonals). For this purpose, we analyze similarities and differences between $2$-dimensional…
The problem of determining extremal hypergraphs containing at most r isomorphic copies of some element of a given hypergraph family was first studied by Boros et al. in 2001. There are not many hypergraph families for which exact results are known concerning the size of the corresponding extremal hypergraphs, except for those equivalent to the classical Turan numbers. In this paper, we determine the size of extremal k-uniform hypergraphs containing at most one pair of 2-intersecting edges for k in {3,4}. We give a complete solution when k=3 and an almost complete solution (with eleven exceptio…
For a $k$-uniform hypergraph $F$ let $\textrm{ex}(n,F)$ be the maximum number of edges of a $k$-uniform $n$-vertex hypergraph $H$ which contains no copy of $F$. Determining or estimating $\textrm{ex}(n,F)$ is a classical and central problem in extremal combinatorics. While for graphs ($k=2$) this problem is well understood, due to the work of Mantel, Turán, Erdős, Stone, Simonovits and many others, only very little is known for $k$-uniform hypergraphs for $k>2$. Already the case when $F$ is a $k$-uniform hypergraph with three edges on $k+1$ vertices is still wide open even for $k=3$. We consid…
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 matching in a hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$ is a set of pairwise disjoint hyperedges. The matching number $ν(\mathcal{H})$ of $\mathcal{H}$ is the size of a maximum matching in $\mathcal{H}$. A subset $D$ of vertices of $\mathcal{H}$ is a dominating set of $\mathcal{H}$ if for every $v\in V\setminus D$ there exists $u\in D$ such that $u$ and $v$ lie in an hyperedge of $\mathcal{H}$. The cardinality of a minimum dominating set of $\mathcal{H}$ is the domination number of $\mathcal{H}$, denoted by $γ(\mathcal{H})$. It was proved that $γ(\mathcal{H})\leq (r-1)ν(\mathcal{H})$ for $r$-uniform hypergra…
Let $G$ be a graph. We say that a hypergraph $H$ is a Berge-$G$ if there is a bijection $ϕ: E(G)\to E(H)$ such that $e\subseteq ϕ(e)$ for all $e\in E(G)$. For any $r$-uniform hypergraph $H$ and a real number $p\geq 1$, the $p$-spectral radius $λ^{(p)}(H)$ of $H$ is defined as \[ λ^{(p)}(H):=\max_{{\bf x}\in\mathbb{R}^n,\,\|{\bf x}\|_p=1} r\sum_{\{i_1,i_2,\ldots,i_r\}\in E(H)} x_{i_1}x_{i_2}\cdots x_{i_r}. \] In this paper, we study the $p$-spectral radius of Berge-$G$ hypergraphs. We determine the $3$-uniform hypergraphs with maximum $p$-spectral radius for $p\geq 1$ among Berge-$G$ hypergraph…
As one of the most fundamental and well-known NP-complete problems, the Hamilton cycle problem has been the subject of intensive research. Recent developments in the area have highlighted the crucial role played by the notions of expansion and quasi-randomness. These concepts and other recent techniques have led to the solution of several long-standing problems in the area. New aspects have also emerged, such as resilience, robustness and the study of Hamilton cycles in hypergraphs. We survey these developments and highlight open problems, with an emphasis on extremal and probabilistic approac…
Let $G$ be a graph and $\mathcal{H}$ be a hypergraph both on the same vertex set. We say that a hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$ is a \emph{Berge}-$G$ if there is a bijection $f : E(G) \rightarrow E(\mathcal{H})$ such that for $e \in E(G)$ we have $e \subset f(e)$. This generalizes the established definitions of "Berge path" and "Berge cycle" to general graphs. For a fixed graph $G$ we examine the maximum possible size (i.e.\ the sum of the cardinality of each edge) of a hypergraph with no Berge-$G$ as a subhypergraph. In the present paper we prove general bounds for this maximum when $G$ is an arbitr…
We construct a set of positive integers A in {1,..., n} with |A|>> n^{2/3} that does not contain Hilbert cubes of dimension 3. As a consequence we prove that ex(n; K^(3)(2,2,2))>> n^{8/3} where K^(3)(2,2,2) is the simplest complete 3-partite hypergraph. This is the first case of an improvement on the trivial lower bound for ex(n; L) when L is a complete r-partite hypergraph.
In this paper, we address the following problem due to Frankl and Füredi (1984). What is the maximum number of hyperedges in an $r$-uniform hypergraph with $n$ vertices, such that every set of $r+1$ vertices contains $0$ or exactly $2$ hyperedges? They solved this problem for $r=3$. For $r=4$, a partial solution is given by Gunderson and Semeraro (2017) when $n=q+1$ for some prime power number $q\equiv3\pmod{4} $. Assuming the existence of skew-symmetric conference matrices for every order divisible by $4$, we give a solution for $n\equiv0\pmod{4} $ and for $n\equiv3\pmod{4}$.
In this paper we define a class of combinatorial structures the instances of which can each be thought of as a model of directed hypergraphs in some way. Each of these models is uniform in that all edges have the same internal structure, and each is simple in that no loops or multiedges are allowed. We generalize the concepts of Turan density, blowup density, and jumps to this class and show that many basic extremal results extend naturally in this new setting. In particular, we show that supersaturation holds, the blowup of a generalized directed hypergraph (GDH) has the same Turan density as…
Let $G$ be a cancellative $3$-uniform hypergraph in which the symmetric difference of any two edges is not contained in a third one. Equivalently, a $3$-uniform hypergraph $G$ is cancellative if and only if $G$ is $\{F_4, F_5\}$-free, where $F_4 = \{abc, abd, bcd\}$ and $F_5 = \{abc, abd, cde\}$. A classical result in extremal combinatorics stated that the maximum size of a cancellative hypergraph is achieved by the balanced complete tripartite $3$-uniform hypergraph, which was firstly proved by Bollobás and later by Keevash and Mubayi. In this paper, we consider spectral extremal problems for…
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…
Let $F$ be a graph. We say that a hypergraph $H$ is a {\it Berge}-$F$ if there is a bijection $f : E(F) \rightarrow E(H )$ such that $e \subseteq f(e)$ for every $e \in E(F)$. Note that Berge-$F$ actually denotes a class of hypergraphs. The maximum number of edges in an $n$-vertex $r$-graph with no subhypergraph isomorphic to any Berge-$F$ is denoted $\ex_r(n,\textrm{Berge-}F)$. In this paper we establish new upper and lower bounds on $\ex_r(n,\textrm{Berge-}F)$ for general graphs $F$, and investigate connections between $\ex_r(n,\textrm{Berge-}F)$ and other recently studied extremal functions…
Let $\mathcal{H}$ be a hypergraph with $n$ vertices. Suppose that $d_1,d_2,\ldots,d_n$ are degrees of the vertices of $\mathcal{H}$. The $t$-th graph entropy based on degrees of $\mathcal{H}$ is defined as $$ I_d^t(\mathcal{H}) =-\sum_{i=1}^{n}\left(\frac{d_i^{t}}{\sum_{j=1}^{n}d_j^{t}}\log\frac{d_i^{t}}{\sum_{j=1}^{n}d_j^{t}}\right) =\log\left(\sum_{i=1}^{n}d_i^{t}\right)-\sum_{i=1}^{n}\left(\frac{d_i^{t}}{\sum_{j=1}^{n}d_j^{t}}\log d_i^{t}\right), $$ where $t$ is a real number and the logarithm is taken to the base two. In this paper we obtain upper and lower bounds of $I_d^t(\mathcal{H})$ f…
National University of Singapore（新加坡国立大学）；University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学）；Tsinghua University（清华大学）；Georgia Institute of Technology（佐治亚理工学院）
We study the size of the shadow of $k$-uniform hypergraphs with bounded degree. Lower bounds on the ratio of the size of the shadow and the size of the hypergraph are given as a function of the degree bound and $k$. We show that cliques are extremal for a long range of degree bounds, but not for every bound. We give a general, but not sharp lower bound on the shadow ratio and show, that sometimes we can get extremal hypergraphs by deleting disjoint maximal matchings from a clique.
We investigate extremal problems for hypergraphs satisfying the following density condition. A $3$-uniform hypergraph $H=(V, E)$ is $(d, η,P_2)$-dense if for any two subsets of pairs $P$, $Q\subseteq V\times V$ the number of pairs $((x,y),(x,z))\in P\times Q$ with $\{x,y,z\}\in E$ is at least $d|\mathcal{K}_{P_2}(P,Q)|-η|V|^3,$ where $\mathcal{K}_{P_2}(P,Q)$ denotes the set of pairs in $P\times Q$ of the form $((x,y),(x,z))$. For a given $3$-uniform hypergraph $F$ we are interested in the infimum $d\geq 0$ such that for sufficiently small $η$ every sufficiently large $(d, η,P_2)$-dense hypergr…
A classical result in extremal graph theory is Mantel's Theorem, which states that every maximum triangle-free subgraph of $K_n$ is bipartite. A sparse version of Mantel's Theorem is that, for sufficiently large $p$, every maximum triangle-free subgraph of $G(n,p)$ is w.h.p. bipartite. Recently, DeMarco and Kahn proved this for $p > K \sqrt{\log n/n}$ for some constant $K$, and apart from the value of the constant this bound is best possible. We study an extremal problem of this type in random hypergraphs. Denote by $F_5$, which sometimes called as the generalized triangle, the 3-uniform hyper…
Identifying graphs with extremal properties is an extensively studied topic in spectral graph theory. In this paper, we study the log-concavity of a type of iteration sequence related to the $α$-normal weighted incidence matrices which is presented by Lu and Man for computing the spectral radius of hypergraphs. By using results obtained about the sequence and the method of some edge operations, we will characterize completely extremal k-graphs with the smallest spectral radius among bicyclic hypergraphs with given size.
Turán's famous tetrahedron problem is to compute the Turán density of the tetrahedron $K_4^3$. This is equivalent to determining the maximum $\ell_1$-norm of the codegree vector of a $K_4^3$-free $n$-vertex $3$-uniform hypergraph. We introduce a new way for measuring extremality of hypergraphs and determine asymptotically the extremal function of the tetrahedron in our notion. The codegree squared sum, $\text{co}_2(G)$, of a $3$-uniform hypergraph $G$ is the sum of codegrees squared $d(x,y)^2$ over all pairs of vertices $xy$, or in other words, the square of the $\ell_2$-norm of the codegree v…
Let $F = (U,E)$ be a graph and $\mathcal{H} = (V,\mathcal{E})$ be a hypergraph. We say that $\mathcal{H}$ contains a Berge-$F$ if there exist injections $ψ:U\to V$ and $φ:E\to \mathcal{E}$ such that for every $e=\{u,v\}\in E$, $\{ψ(u),ψ(v)\}\subsetφ(e)$. Let $ex_r(n,F)$ denote the maximum number of hyperedges in an $r$-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices which does not contain a Berge-$F$. For small enough $r$ and non-bipartite $F$, $ex_r(n,F)=Ω(n^2)$; we show that for sufficiently large $r$, $ex_r(n,F)=o(n^2)$. Let $thres(F) = \min\{r_0 :ex_r(n,F) = o(n^2) \text{ for all } r \ge r_0 \}$. We sh…
Let $K^{(r)}_{s_1,s_2,\cdots,s_r}$ be the complete $r$-partite $r$-uniform hypergraph and $ex(n,K^{(r)}_{s_1,s_2,\cdots,s_r})$ be the maximum number of edges in any $n$-vertex $K^{(r)}_{s_1,s_2,\cdots,s_r}$-free $r$-uniform hypergraph. It is well-known in the graph case that $ex(n,K_{s,t})=Θ(n^{2-1/s})$ when $t$ is sufficiently larger than $s$. In this note, we generalize the above to hypergraphs by showing that if $s_r$ is sufficiently larger than $s_1,s_2,\cdots,s_{r-1}$ then $$ex(n, K^{(r)}_{s_1,s_2,\cdots,s_r})=Θ\left(n^{r-\frac{1}{s_1s_2\cdots s_{r-1}}}\right).$$ This follows from a more …
In this paper we present a novel approach in extremal set theory which may be viewed as an asymmetric version of Katona's permutation method. We use it to find more Turán numbers of hypergraphs in the Erdős--Ko--Rado range. An $(a,b)$-path $P$ of length $2k-1$ consists of $2k-1$ sets of size $r=a+b$ as follows. Take $k$ pairwise disjoint $a$-element sets $A_0, A_2, \dots, A_{2k-2}$ and other $k$ pairwise disjoint $b$-element sets $B_1, B_3, \dots, B_{2k-1}$ and order them linearly as $A_0, B_1, A_2, B_3, A_4\dots$. Define the (hyper)edges of $P_{2k-1}(a,b)$ as the sets of the form $A_i\cup B_{…
An edge-colored hypergraph is rainbow if all of its edges have different colors. Given two hypergraphs $\mathcal{H}$ and $\mathcal{G}$, the anti-Ramsey number $ar(\mathcal{G}, \mathcal{H})$ of $\mathcal{H}$ in $\mathcal{G}$ is the maximum number of colors needed to color the edges of $\mathcal{G}$ so that there does not exist a rainbow copy of $\mathcal{H}$. Li et al. determined the anti-Ramsey number of $k$-matchings in complete bipartite graphs. Jin and Zang showed the uniqueness of the extremal coloring. In this paper, as a generalization of these results, we determine the anti-Ramsey numbe…
We introduce a containment relation of hypergraphs which respects linear orderings of vertices and investigate associated extremal functions. We extend, by means of a more generally applicable theorem, the n.log n upper bound on the ordered graph extremal function of F=({1,3}, {1,5}, {2,3}, {2,4}) due to Z. Furedi to the n.(log n)^2.(loglog n)^3 upper bound in the hypergraph case. We use Davenport-Schinzel sequences to derive almost linear upper bounds in terms of the inverse Ackermann function. We obtain such upper bounds for the extremal functions of forests consisting of stars whose all cen…
One powerful method for upper-bounding the largest independent set in a graph is the Hoffman bound, which gives an upper bound on the largest independent set of a graph in terms of its eigenvalues. It is easily seen that the Hoffman bound is sharp on the tensor power of a graph whenever it is sharp for the original graph. In this paper, we introduce the related problem of upper-bounding independent sets in tensor powers of hypergraphs. We show that many of the prominent open problems in extremal combinatorics, such as the Turán problem for (hyper-)graphs, can be encoded as special cases of thi…
