Determining the maximum size of a $t$-intersecting code in $[m]^n$ was a longstanding open problem of Frankl and Füredi, solved independently by Ahlswede and Khachatrian and by Frankl and Tokushige. We extend their result to the setting of forbidden intersections, by showing that for any $m>2$ and $n$ large compared with $t$ (but not necessarily $m$) that the same bound holds for codes with the weaker property of being $(t-1)$-avoiding, i.e.\ having no two vectors that agree on exactly $t-1$ coordinates. Our proof proceeds via a junta approximation result of independent interest, which we prove via a development of our recent theory of global hypercontractivity: we show that any $(t-1)$-avoiding code is approximately contained in a $t$-intersecting junta (a code where membership is determined by a constant number of co-ordinates). In particular, when $t=1$ this gives an alternative proof of a recent result of Eberhard, Kahn, Narayanan and Spirkl that symmetric intersecting codes in $[m]^n$ have size $o(m^n)$.
We solve a generalised form of a conjecture of Kalai motivated by attempts to improve the bounds for Borsuk's problem. The conjecture can be roughly understood as asking for an analogue of the Frankl-Rödl forbidden intersection theorem in which set intersections are vector-valued. We discover that the vector world is richer in surprising ways: in particular, Kalai's conjecture is false, but we prove a corrected statement that is essentially best possible, and applies to a considerably more general setting. Our methods include the use of maximum entropy measures, VC-dimension, Dependent Random …
A graph $G$ has $p$-intersection number at most $d$ if it is possible to assign to every vertex $u$ of $G$, a subset $S(u)$ of some ground set $U$ with $|U|=d$ in such a way that distinct vertices $u$ and $v$ of $G$ are adjacent in $G$ if and only if $|S(u)\cap S(v)|\geq p$. We show that every minimal forbidden induced subgraph for the hereditary class ${\cal G}(d,p)$ of graphs whose $p$-intersection number is at most $d$, has order at most $3\cdot 2^{d+1}+1$, and that the exponential dependence on $d$ in this upper bound is necessary. For $p\in \{ d-1,d-2\}$, we provide more explicit results …
In 1966, Gallai asked whether all longest paths in a connected graph have a nonempty intersection. The answer to this question is not true in general and various counterexamples have been found. However, there is a positive solution to Gallai's question for many well-known classes of graphs such as split graphs, series parallel graphs, and $2K_2$-free graphs. Among all the graph classes that support Gallai's question, almost all of them were shown to be Hamiltonian under certain conditions. This observation motivates us to investigate Gallai's question in graphs that are "close" to Hamiltonici…
It was noted already in the 90s that many classic graph classes, such as interval, chordal, and bipartite graphs, can be characterized by the existence of an ordering of the vertices avoiding some ordered subgraphs, called patterns. Very recently, all the classes corresponding to patterns on three vertices (including the ones mentioned above) have been listed, and proved to be efficiently recognizable. In contrast, very little is known about patterns on four vertices. One of the few graph classes characterized by a pattern on four vertices is the class of intersection graphs of rectangles that…
The intersection graphs of stars in some tree are known as substar graphs. In this paper we give a characterization of substar graphs by the list of minimal forbidden induced subgraphs. This corrects a flaw in the main result of Chang, Jacobson, Monma and West (Subtree and substar intersection numbers, Discrete Appl. Math. 44, 205-220 (1993)) and this leads to a different list of minimal forbidden induced subgraphs.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）；Boston University（波士顿大学）；University of Memphis（孟菲斯大学）；Einstein Institute of Mathematics, Hebrew University（希伯来大学爱因斯坦数学研究所）
A family of permutations $\mathcal{F} \subset S_{n}$ is said to be $t$-intersecting if any two permutations in $\mathcal{F}$ agree on at least $t$ points. It is said to be $(t-1)$-intersection-free if no two permutations in $\mathcal{F}$ agree on exactly $t-1$ points. If $S,T \subset \{1,2,\ldots,n\}$ with $|S|=|T|$, and $π: S \to T$ is a bijection, the $π$-star in $S_n$ is the family of all permutations in $S_n$ that agree with $π$ on all of $S$. An $s$-star is a $π$-star such that $π$ is a bijection between sets of size $s$. Friedgut and Pilpel, and independently the first author, showed tha…
A family $F$ of sets is said to be $t$-intersecting if $|A \cap B| \geq t$ for any $A,B \in F$. The seminal Complete Intersection Theorem of Ahlswede and Khachatrian (1997) gives the maximal size $f(n,k,t)$ of a $t$-intersecting family of $k$-element subsets of $[n]=\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$, together with a characterisation of the extremal families. The forbidden intersection problem, posed by Erdős and Sós in 1971, asks for a determination of the maximal size $g(n,k,t)$ of a family $F$ of $k$-element subsets of $[n]$ such that $|A \cap B| \neq t-1$ for any $A,B \in F$. In this paper, we show that fo…
An interval graph is the intersection graph of a finite set of intervals on a line and a circular-arc graph is the intersection graph of a finite set of arcs on a circle. While a forbidden induced subgraph characterization of interval graphs was found fifty years ago, finding an analogous characterization for circular-arc graphs is a long-standing open problem. In this work, we study the intersection graphs of finite sets of arcs on a circle no three of which cover the circle, known as normal Helly circular-arc graphs. Those circular-arc graphs which are minimal forbidden induced subgraphs for…
We give a new proof of the Frankl-Rödl theorem on forbidden intersections, via the probabilistic method of dependent random choice. Our method extends to codes with forbidden distances, where over large alphabets our bound is significantly better than that obtained by Frankl and Rödl. We also apply our bound to a question of Ellis on sets of permutations with forbidden distances, and to establish a weak form of a conjecture of Alon, Shpilka and Umans on sunflowers.
In this article we construct new minimal intersection sets in ${\mathrm{AG}}(r,q^2)$ sporting three intersection numbers with hyperplanes; we then use these sets to obtain linear error correcting codes with few weights, whose weight enumerator we also determine. Furthermore, we provide a new family of three-character multisets in ${\mathrm{PG}}(r,q^2)$ with $r$ even and we also compute their weight distribution.
We prove that a certain binary linear code associated with the incidence matrix of a quasi-symmetric 2-(37,9,8) design with intersection numbers 1 and 3 must be contained in an extremal doubly even self-dual code of length 40. Using the classification of extremal doubly even self-dual codes of length 40, we show that a quasi-symmetric 2-(37,9,8) design with intersection numbers 1 and 3 does not exist.
The brain encodes spacial structure through a combinatorial code of neural activity. Experiments suggest such codes correspond to convex areas of the subject's environment. We present an intrinsic condition that implies a neural code may correspond to a convex space and give a bound on the minimal dimension underlying such a realization.
Two tantalizing invariants of a combinatorial code $\mathcal C\subseteq 2^{[n]}$ are cdim$(\mathcal C)$ and odim$(\mathcal C)$, the smallest dimension in which $\mathcal C$ can be realized by convex closed or open sets, respectively. Cruz, Giusti, Itskov, and Kronholm showed that for intersection complete codes $\mathcal C$ with $m+1$ maximal codewords, odim$(\mathcal C)$ and cdim$(\mathcal C)$ are both bounded above by $\max\{2,m\}$. Results of Lienkaemper, Shiu, and Woodstock imply that odim and cdim may differ, even for intersection complete codes. We add to the literature on open and close…
In this article, constant dimension subspace codes whose codewords have subspace distance in a prescribed set of integers, are considered. The easiest example of such an object is a {\it junta}; i.e. a subspace code in which all codewords go through a common subspace. We focus on the case when only two intersection values for the codewords, are assigned. In such a case we determine an upper bound for the dimension of the vector space spanned by the elements of a non-junta code. In addition, if the two intersection values are consecutive, we prove that such a bound is tight, and classify the ex…
An interval $k$-graph is the intersection graph of a family $\mathcal{I}$ of intervals of the real line partitioned into at most $k$ classes with vertices adjacent if and only if their corresponding intervals intersect and belong to different classes. In this paper we discuss the interval $k$-graphs that are the incomparability graphs of orders; i.e., cocomparability interval $k$-graphs or interval $k$-orders. Interval $2$-orders have been characterized in many ways, but we show that analogous characterizations do not carry over to interval $k$-orders, for $k > 2$. We describe the structure of…
We detail the enumeration of all two-intersection sets of the five-dimensional projective space over the field of order 3 that are invariant under an element of order 7, which include the examples of Hill (1973) and Gulliver (1996). Up to projective equivalence, there are 6635 such two-intersection sets.
Two elements $g$ and $h$ of a permutation group $G$ acting on a set $V$ are said to be intersecting if $g(v) = h(v)$ for some $v \in V$. More generally, a subset ${\cal F}$ of $G$ is an intersecting set if every pair of elements of ${\cal F}$ is intersecting. The intersection density $ρ(G)$ of a transitive permutation group $G$ is the maximum value of the quotient $|{\cal F}|/|G_v|$ where $G_v$ is a stabilizer of $v\in V$ and ${\cal F}$ runs over all intersecting sets in $G$. Intersection densities of transitive groups of degree $pq$, where $p>q$ are odd primes, is considered. In particular, t…
Let $X$ be a complete $n$-dimensional simplicial toric variety with homogeneous coordinate ring $S$. We study the multigraded Hilbert function $H_Y$ of reduced $0$-dimensional subschemes $Y$ in $X$. We provide explicit formulas and prove non-decreasing and stabilization properties of $H_Y$ when $Y$ is a $0$-dimensional complete intersection in $X$. We apply our results to computing the dimension of some evaluation codes on $0$-dimensional complete intersection in simplicial toric varieties.
A known Kronecker construction of completely regular codes has been investigated taking different alphabets in the component codes. This approach is also connected with lifting constructions of completely regular codes. We obtain several classes of completely regular codes with different parameters, but identical intersection array. Given a prime power $q$ and any two natural numbers $a,b$, we construct completely transitive codes over different fields with covering radius $ρ=\min\{a,b\}$ and identical intersection array, specifically, one code over $\F_{q^r}$ for each divisor $r$ of $a$ or $b…
If C is a binary linear code, let C^2 be the linear code spanned by intersections of pairs of codewords of C. We construct an asymptotically good family of binary linear codes such that, for C ranging in this family, the C^2 also form an asymptotically good family. For this we use algebraic-geometry codes, concatenation, and a fair amount of bilinear algebra. More precisely, the two main ingredients used in our construction are, first, a description of the symmetric square of an odd degree extension field in terms only of field operations of small degree, and second, a recent result of Garcia-…
For a binary code $Γ$ of length $v$, a $v$-word $w$ produces by a set of codewords $\{w^1,...,w^r\} \subseteq Γ$ if for all $i=1,...,v$, we have $w_i\in \{w_i^1, ..., w_i^r\}$ . We call a code $r$-secure frameproof of size $t$ if $|Γ|=t$ and for any $v$-word that is produced by two sets $C_1$ and $C_2$ of size at most $r$ then the intersection of these sets is nonempty. A $d$-biclique cover of size $v$ of a graph $G$ is a collection of $v$-complete bipartite subgraphs of $G$ such that each edge of $G$ belongs to at least $d$ of these complete bipartite subgraphs. In this paper, we show that fo…
Neural codes serve as a language for neurons in the brain. Convex codes, which arise from the pattern of intersections of convex sets in Euclidean space, are of particular relevance to neuroscience. Not every code is convex, however, and the combinatorial properties of a code that determine its convexity are still poorly understood. Here we find that a code that can be realized by a collection of open convex sets may or may not be realizable by closed convex sets, and vice versa, establishing that open convex and closed convex codes are distinct classes. We also prove that max intersection-com…
We are concerned with the problem of designing large families of subsets over a common labeled ground set that have small pairwise intersections and the property that the maximum discrepancy of the label values within each of the sets is less than or equal to one. Our results, based on transversal designs, factorizations of packings and Latin rectangles, show that by jointly constructing the sets and labeling scheme, one can achieve optimal family sizes for many parameter choices. Probabilistic arguments akin to those used for pseudorandom generators lead to significantly suboptimal results wh…
We introduce the factor complex of a neural code, and show how intervals and maximal codewords are captured by the combinatorics of factor complexes. We use these results to obtain algebraic and combinatorial characterizations of max-intersection-complete codes, as well as a new combinatorial characterization of intersection-complete codes.
We give some natural sufficient conditions for balls in a metric space to have small intersection. Roughly speaking, this happens when the metric space is (i) expanding and (ii) well-spread, and (iii) a certain random variable on the boundary of a ball has a small tail. As applications, we show that the volume of intersection of balls in Hamming, Johnson spaces and symmetric groups decay exponentially as their centers drift apart. To verify condition (iii), we prove some large deviation inequalities `on a slice' for functions with Lipschitz conditions. We then use these estimates on intersecti…
A (smooth) embedding of a closed curve on the plane with finitely many intersections is said to be generic if each point of self-intersection is crossed exactly twice and at non-tangent angles. A finite word $ω$ where each character occurs twice is a Gauss code if it can be obtained as the sequence of traversed self-intersections of a generic plane embedding of a close curved $γ$. Then $γ$ is said to realize $ω$. We present a characterization of Gauss codes using Seifert cycles. The characterization is given by an algorithm that, given a Gauss code $ω$ as input, it outputs a combinatorial plan…
Chord diagrams on circles and their intersection graphs (also known as circle graphs) have been intensively studied, and have many applications to the study of knots and knot invariants, among others. However, chord diagrams on more general graphs have not been studied, and are potentially equally valuable in the study of spatial graphs. We will define chord diagrams for planar embeddings of planar graphs and their intersection graphs, and prove some basic results. Then, as an application, we will introduce Gauss codes for immersions of graphs in the plane and give algorithms to determine whet…
Given an intersection pattern of arbitrary sets in Euclidean space, is there an arrangement of convex open sets in Euclidean space that exhibits the same intersections? This question is combinatorial and topological in nature, but is motivated by neuroscience. Specifically, we are interested in a type of neuron called a place cell, which fires precisely when an organism is in a certain region, usually convex, called a place field. The earlier question, therefore, can be rephrased as follows: Which neural codes, that is, patterns of neural activity, can arise from a collection of convex open se…
A convex code is a binary code generated by the pattern of intersections of a collection of open convex sets in some Euclidean space. Convex codes are relevant to neuroscience as they arise from the activity of neurons that have convex receptive fields. In this paper, we use algebraic methods to determine if a code is convex. Specifically, we use the neural ideal of a code, which is a generalization of the Stanley-Reisner ideal. Using the neural ideal together with its standard generating set, the canonical form, we provide algebraic signatures of certain families of codes that are non-convex.…
Extremal Deletion-Ball Intersections under Run-Count and Lower-Order Deletion-Ball Intersection Constraints
Institute of Mathematics and Interdisciplinary Sciences, Xidian University（西安电子科技大学数学与交叉科学研究院）；School of Mathematical Sciences, Capital Normal University（首都师范大学数学科学学院）
