For a graph $H$ and an integer $n$, we let $nH$ denote the disjoint union of
$n$ copies of $H$. In 1975, Burr, Erdős, and Spencer initiated the study
of Ramsey numbers for $nH$, one of few instances for which Ramsey numbers are
now known precisely. They showed that there is a constant $c = c(H)$ such that
$r(nH) = (2|H| - α(H))n + c$, provided $n$ is sufficiently large.
Subsequently, Burr gave an implicit way of computing $c$ and noted that this
long term behaviour occurs when $n$ is triply exponential in $|H|$. Very
recently, Bucić and Sudakov revived the problem and established an
essentially tight bound on $n$ by showing $r(nH)$ follows this behaviour
already when the number of copies is just a single exponential. We provide
significantly stronger bounds on $n$ in case $H$ is a sparse graph, most
notably of bounded maximum degree. These are relatable to the current state of
the art bounds on $r(H)$ and (in a way) tight. Our methods rely on a beautiful
classic proof of Graham, Rödl, and Ruciński, with the emphasis on
developing an efficient absorbing method for bounded degree graphs.
Denote by k_4(n) the minimal number of monochromatic copies of a K_4 in a 2-colouring of the edges of K_n and let c_4 := lim k_4(n)/\binom{n}{4}. The best known bounds so far were given by Thomason, who proved that c_4 < 1/33 \approx 0.0303, and Giraud, who showed that c_4 > 1/46 \approx 0.0217. In this paper we prove the new lower bound c_4 > 204603019 / 7112448000 > 0.0287.
We say that a graph F strongly arrows a pair of graphs (G,H) if any colouring of its edges with red and blue leads to either a red G or a blue H appearing as induced subgraphs of F. The induced Ramsey number, IR(G,H) is defined as the smallest order of a graph that strongly arrows (G,H). We consider the connection between the induced Ramsey number for a pair of two connected graphs IR(G,H) and the induced Ramsey number for multiple copies of these graphs IR(sG,tH), where xG denotes the pairwise vertex-disjoint union of x copies of G. It is easy to see that if F strongly arrow (G,H), then (s+t-…
The Ramsey number $r(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the smallest integer $n$ such that any $2$ colouring of the edges of a clique on $n$ vertices contains a monochromatic copy of $G$. Determining the Ramsey number of $G$ is a central problem of Ramsey theory with long and illustrious history. Despite this there are precious few classes of graphs $G$ for which the value of $r(G)$ is known exactly. One such family consists of large vertex disjoint unions of a fixed graph $H$, we denote such a graph, consisting of $n$ copies of $H$ by $nH$. This classical result was proved by Burr, Erdős and Spencer in 19…
In this paper, for sufficiently large $n$ we determine the Ramsey number $R(G,nH)$ where $G$ is a $k$-uniform hypergraph with the maximum independent set that intersects each of the edges in $k-1$ vertices and $H$ is a $k$-uniform hypergraph with a vertex so that the hypergraph induced by the edges containing this vertex is a star. There are several examples for such $G$ and $H$, among them are any disjoint union of $k$-uniform hypergraphs involving loose paths, loose cycles, tight paths, tight cycles with a multiple of $k$ edges, stars, Kneser hypergraphs and complete $k$-uniform $k$-partite …
We study the structure of red-blue edge colorings of complete graphs, with no copies of the $n$-cycle $C_n$ in red, and no copies of the $n$-wheel $W_n = C_n \ast K_1$ in blue, for an odd integer $n$. Our first main result is that in any such coloring, deleting at most two vertices we obtain a vertex-partition of $G$ into three sets such that the edges inside the partition classes are red, and edges between partition classes are blue. As a second result, we obtain bounds for the Ramsey numbers of $r(C_{2k+1},W_{2j})$ for $k < j$ integers, which asymptotically confirm the values of $4j+1$, as i…
We determine the Ramsey number of a connected clique matching. That is, we show that if $G$ is a $2$-edge-coloured complete graph on $(r^2 - r - 1)n - r + 1$ vertices, then there is a monochromatic connected subgraph containing $n$ disjoint copies of $K_r$, and that this number of vertices cannot be reduced.
The Ramsey number $r(H)$ of a graph $H$ is the minimum integer $n$ such that any two-coloring of the edges of the complete graph $K_n$ contains a monochromatic copy of $H$. While this definition only asks for a single monochromatic copy of $H$, it is often the case that every two-edge-coloring of the complete graph on $r(H)$ vertices contains many monochromatic copies of $H$. The minimum number of such copies over all two-colorings of $K_{r(H)}$ will be referred to as the threshold Ramsey multiplicity of $H$. Addressing a problem of Harary and Prins, who were the first to systematically study …
A relational structure $\mathrm{R}$ is {\em rainbow Ramsey} if for every finite induced substructure $\mathrm{C}$ of $\mathrm{R}$ and every colouring of the copies of $\mathrm{C}$ with countably many colours, such that each colour is used at most $k$ times for a fixed $k$, there exists a copy $\mathrm{R}^\ast$ of $\mathrm{R}$ so that the copies of $\mathrm{C}$ in $\mathrm{R^\ast}$ use each colour at most once. We show that certain ultrahomogenous binary relational structures, for example the Rado graph, are rainbow Ramsey. Via compactness this then implies that for all finite graphs $\mathrm{B…
We say that a graph $G$ has the Ramsey property w.r.t.\ some graph $F$ and some integer $r\geq 2$, or $G$ is $(F,r)$-Ramsey for short, if any $r$-coloring of the edges of $G$ contains a monochromatic copy of $F$. R{ö}dl and Ruci{ń}ski asked how globally sparse $(F,r)$-Ramsey graphs $G$ can possibly be, where the density of $G$ is measured by the subgraph $H\subseteq G$ with the highest average degree. So far, this so-called Ramsey density is known only for cliques and some trivial graphs $F$. In this work we determine the Ramsey density up to some small error terms for several cases when $F$ i…
The Ramsey multiplicity constant of a graph $H$ is the minimum proportion of copies of $H$ in the complete graph which are monochromatic under an edge-coloring of $K_n$ as $n$ goes to infinity. Graphs for which this minimum is asymptotically achieved by taking a random coloring are called {\em common}, and common graphs have been studied extensively, leading to the Burr-Rosta conjecture and Sidorenko's conjecture. Erdős and Sós asked what the maximum number of rainbow triangles is in a $3$-coloring of the edge set of $K_n$, a rainbow version of the Ramsey multiplicity question. A graph $H$ is …
We prove that for all epsilon>0 there are c>0 and n_0 such that for all n>n_0 the following holds. For any two-colouring of the edges of $K_{n,n,n}$ one colour contains copies of all trees T of order t<(3-epsilon)n/2 and with maximum degree at most n^c. This confirms a conjecture of Schelp.
Let $G$ be an $r$-uniform hypergraph. When is it possible to orient the edges of $G$ in such a way that every $p$-set of vertices has some $p$-degree equal to $0$? (The $p$-degrees generalise for sets of vertices what in-degree and out-degree are for single vertices in directed graphs.) Caro and Hansberg asked if the obvious Hall-type necessary condition is also sufficient. Our main aim is to show that this is true for $r$ large (for given $p$), but false in general. Our counterexample is based on a new technique in sparse Ramsey theory that may be of independent interest.
Chvatal, Roedl, Szemeredi and Trotter proved that the Ramsey numbers of graphs of bounded maximum degree are linear in their order. In previous work, we proved the same result for 3-uniform hypergraphs. Here we extend this result to k-uniform hypergraphs, for any integer k > 3. As in the 3-uniform case, the main new tool which we prove and use is an embedding lemma for k-uniform hypergraphs of bounded maximum degree into suitable k-uniform `quasi-random' hypergraphs.
An edge-colored graph is called rainbow if all the colors on its edges are distinct. Given a positive integer n and a graph G, the anti-Ramsey number ar(n,G) is the maximum number of colors in an edge-coloring of K_{n} with no rainbow copy of G. Denote by kC_{3} the union of k vertex-disjoint copies of C_{3}. In this paper, we determine the anti-Ramsey number ar(n,kC_{3}) for n=3k and n\geq2k^{2}-k+2, respectively. When 3k\leq n\leq 2k^{2}-k+2, we give lower and upper bounds for ar(n, kC_{3}).
The poset Ramsey number $R(Q_m,Q_n)$ is the smallest integer $N$ such that any blue-red coloring of the elements of the Boolean lattice $Q_N$ has a blue induced copy of $Q_m$ or a red induced copy of $Q_n$. The weak poset Ramsey number $R_w(Q_m,Q_n)$ is defined analogously, with weak copies instead of induced copies. It is easy to see that $R(Q_m,Q_n) \ge R_w(Q_m,Q_n)$. Axenovich and Walzer showed that $n+2 \le R(Q_2,Q_n) \le 2n+2$. Recently, Lu and Thompson improved the upper bound to $\frac{5}{3}n+2$. In this paper, we solve this problem asymptotically by showing that $R(Q_2,Q_n)=n+O(n/\log …
The book graph $B_n^{(k)}$ consists of $n$ copies of $K_{k+1}$ joined along a common $K_k$. The Ramsey numbers of $B_n^{(k)}$ are known to have strong connections to the classical Ramsey numbers of cliques. Recently, the first author determined the asymptotic order of these Ramsey numbers for fixed $k$, thus answering an old question of Erdős, Faudree, Rousseau, and Schelp. In this paper, we first provide a simpler proof of this theorem. Next, answering a question of the first author, we present a different proof that avoids the use of Szemerédi's regularity lemma, thus providing much tighter …
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.
A graph on 5 vertices consisting of 2 copies of the cycle graph C3 sharing a common vertex is called the Butterfly graph (B). The smallest natural number s such that any two-colouring (say red and blue) of the edges of Kj*s has a copy of a red B or a blue G is called the multipartite Ramsey number of Butterfly graph versus G. This number is denoted by mj(B,G). In this paper we find exact the values for mj(B,G) when and G represents any connected proper subgraph of K4 with at least one edge.
The Ramsey number $r(H)$ of a graph $H$ is the minimum $n$ such that any two-coloring of the edges of the complete graph $K_n$ contains a monochromatic copy of $H$. The threshold Ramsey multiplicity $m(H)$ is then the minimum number of monochromatic copies of $H$ taken over all two-edge-colorings of $K_{r(H)}$. The study of this concept was first proposed by Harary and Prins almost fifty years ago. In a companion paper, the authors have shown that there is a positive constant $c$ such that the threshold Ramsey multiplicity for a path or even cycle with $k$ vertices is at least $(ck)^k$, which …
Given graphs $ F_1, F_2$ and $G$, we say that $G$ is Ramsey for $(F_1,F_2)$ and we write $G\rightarrow(F_1, F_2)$, if for every edge coloring of $G$ by red and blue, there is either a red copy of $F_1$ or a blue copy of $F_2$ in $G$. The size Ramsey number $\hat{r}(F_1, F_2)$ is defined as the minimum number of edges of a graph $G$ such that $G\rightarrow(F_1, F_2)$. This paper provides the exact value of $\hat{r}(F_1, F_2)$ for many pairs $(F_1, F_2)$ of star forests, giving a partial solution to a conjecture of Burr et al. (Ramsey-minimal graphs for multiple copies, Indagationes Mathematicae…
Given a graph $G$, a $k$-sparse $j$-set is a set of $j$ vertices inducing a subgraph with maximum degree at most $k$. A $k$-dense $i$-set is a set of $i$ vertices that is $k$-sparse in the complement of $G$. As a generalization of Ramsey numbers, the $k$-defective Ramsey number $R_k^{\mathcal{G}}(i,j)$ for the graph class $\mathcal{G}$ is defined as the smallest natural number $n$ such that all graphs on $n$ vertices in the class $\mathcal{G}$ have either a $k$-dense $i$-set or a $k$-sparse $j$-set. In this paper, we examine $R_k^{\mathcal{G}}(i,j)$ where $\mathcal{G}$ represents various graph…
Building on previous work of the author, for each finite triangle-free graph $\mathbf{G}$, we determine the equivalence relation on the copies of $\mathbf{G}$ inside the universal homogeneous triangle-free graph, $\mathcal{H}_3$, with the smallest number of equivalence classes so that each one of the classes persists in every isomorphic subcopy of $\mathcal{H}_3$. This characterizes the exact big Ramsey degrees of $\mathcal{H}_3$. It follows that the triangle-free Henson graph is a big Ramsey structure.
The book graph $B_n^{(k)}$ consists of $n$ copies of $K_{k+1}$ joined along a common $K_k$. In the prequel to this paper, we studied the diagonal Ramsey number $r(B_n^{(k)}, B_n^{(k)})$. Here we consider the natural off-diagonal variant $r(B_{cn}^{(k)}, B_n^{(k)})$ for fixed $c \in (0,1]$. In this more general setting, we show that an interesting dichotomy emerges: for very small $c$, a simple $k$-partite construction dictates the Ramsey function and all nearly-extremal colorings are close to being $k$-partite, while, for $c$ bounded away from $0$, random colorings of an appropriate density ar…
Let $\mathcal P(n)$ denote the power set of $[n]$, ordered by inclusion, and let $\mathcal P (n,p)$ denote the random poset obtained from $\mathcal P(n)$ by retaining each element from $\mathcal P (n)$ independently at random with probability $p$ and discarding it otherwise. Given any fixed poset $F$ we determine the threshold for the property that $\mathcal P(n,p)$ contains $F$ as an induced subposet. We also asymptotically determine the number of copies of a fixed poset $F$ in $\mathcal P(n)$. Finally, we obtain a number of results on the Ramsey properties of the random poset $\mathcal P(n,p…
We give a short proof that any k-uniform hypergraph H on n vertices with bounded degree Δhas Ramsey number at most c(Δ, k)n, for an appropriate constant c(Δ, k). This result was recently proved by several authors, but those proofs are all based on applications of the hypergraph regularity method. Here we give a much simpler, self-contained proof which uses new techniques developed recently by the authors together with an argument of Kostochka and Rödl. Moreover, our method demonstrates that, for k \geq 4, c(Δ, k) \leq 2^{2^{\Ddots^{2^{c Δ}}}}, where the tower is of height k and the constant c …
A subposet $Q'$ of a poset $Q$ is a copy of a poset $P$ if there is a bijection $f$ between elements of $P$ and $Q'$ such that $x\leq y$ in $P$ iff $f(x)\leq f(y)$ in $Q'$. For posets $P, P'$, let the poset Ramsey number $R(P,P')$ be the smallest $N$ such that no matter how the elements of the Boolean lattice $Q_N$ are colored red and blue, there is a copy of $P$ with all red elements or a copy of $P'$ with all blue elements. We provide some general bounds on $R(P,P')$ and focus on the situation when $P$ and $P'$ are both Boolean lattices. In addition, we give asymptotically tight bounds for t…
We show that in every two-colouring of the edges of the complete graph $K_N$ there is a monochromatic $K_k$ which can be extended in at least $(1 + o_k(1))2^{-k}N$ ways to a monochromatic $K_{k+1}$. This result is asymptotically best possible, as may be seen by considering a random colouring. Equivalently, defining the book $B_n^{(k)}$ to be the graph consisting of $n$ copies of $K_{k+1}$ all sharing a common $K_k$, we show that the Ramsey number $r(B_n^{(k)}) = 2^k n + o_k(n)$. In this form, our result answers a question of Erdős, Faudree, Rousseau and Schelp and establishes an asymptotic ver…
We study graphs with the property that every edge-colouring admits a monochromatic cycle (the length of which may depend freely on the colouring) and describe those graphs that are minimal with this property. We show that every member in this class reduces recursively to one of the base graphs $K_5-e$ or $K_4\vee K_4$ (two copies of $K_4$ identified at an edge), which implies that an arbitrary $n$-vertex graph with $e(G)\geq 2n-1$ must contain one of those as a minor. We also describe three explicit constructions governing the reverse process. As an application we are able to establish Ramsey …
Given a graph $G$, a hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$ is a Berge copy of $F$ if $V(G)\subset V(\mathcal{H})$ and there is a bijection $f:E(G)\rightarrow E(\mathcal{H})$ such that for any edge $e$ of $G$ we have $e\subset f(e)$. We study Ramsey problems for Berge copies of graphs, i.e. the smallest number of vertices of a complete $r$-uniform hypergraph, such that if we color the hyperedges with $c$ colors, there is a monochromatic Berge copy of $G$. We obtain a couple results regarding these problems. In particular, we determine for which $r$ and $c$ the Ramsey number can be super-linear. We also show…
Recently, Souza introduced blowup Ramsey numbers as a generalization of bipartite Ramsey numbers. For graphs $G$ and $H$, say $G\overset{r}{\longrightarrow} H$ if every $r$-edge-coloring of $G$ contains a monochromatic copy of $H$. Let $H[t]$ denote the $t$-blowup of $H$. Then the blowup Ramsey number of $G,H,r,$ and $t$ is defined as the minimum $n$ such that $G[n] \overset{r}{\longrightarrow} H[t]$. Souza proved upper and lower bounds on $n$ that are exponential in $t$, and conjectured that the exponential constant does not depend on $G$. We prove that the dependence on $G$ in the exponentia…
The universal homogeneous triangle-free graph, constructed by Henson and denoted $\mathcal{H}_3$, is the triangle-free analogue of the Rado graph. While the Ramsey theory of the Rado graph has been completely established, beginning with Erdős-Hajnal-Posá and culminating in work of Sauer and Laflamme-Sauer-Vuksanovic, the Ramsey theory of $\mathcal{H}_3$ had only progressed to bounds for vertex colorings (Komjáth-Rödl) and edge colorings (Sauer). This was due to a lack of broadscale techniques. We solve this problem in general: For each finite triangle-free graph $G$, there is a finite number $…
Given a graph $H$ and a function $f:\mathbb{Z}^+ \longrightarrow \mathbb{Z}^+ $, the Ramsey-Turán number of $H$ and $f$, denoted by $RT(n, H, f(n))$, is the maximum number of edges a graph $G$ on $n$ vertices can have, which does not contain $H$ as a subgraph and also does not contain a set of $f(n)$ independent vertices. Let $r$ be a positive integer. In 1969, Erdős and Sós proved that $RT(n,K_{2r+1},o(n))=\frac{n^2}{2}(1-\frac{1}{r})+o(n^2)$. Let $F_k(2r+1)$ denote the graph consisting of $k$ copies of complete graphs $K_{2r+1}$ sharing exactly one vertex. In this paper, we show that $RT(n,F…
Let $B_n^{(k)}$ be the book graph which consists of $n$ copies of $K_{k+1}$ all sharing a common $K_k$, and let $C_m$ be a cycle of length $m$. In this paper, we first determine the exact value of $r(B_n^{(2)}, C_m)$ for $\frac{8}{9}n+112\le m\le \lceil\frac{3n}{2}\rceil+1$ and $n \geq 1000$. This answers a question of Faudree, Rousseau and Sheehan (Cycle--book Ramsey numbers, {\it Ars Combin.,} {\bf 31} (1991), 239--248) in a stronger form when $m$ and $n$ are large. Building upon this exact result, we are able to determine the asymptotic value of $r(B_n^{(k)}, C_n)$ for each $k \geq 3$. Name…
Given an acyclic oriented graph $\vec{H}$ and a graph $G$, we write $G \to \vec{H}$ if every orientation of $G$ has an oriented copy of $\vec{H}$. We define $\vec{R}(\vec{H})$ as the smallest number $n$ such that there exists a graph $G$ satisfying $G \to \vec{H}$. Denoting by $R(H)$ the classical Ramsey number of a graph $H$, we show that $\vec{R}(\vec{H}) \leq 2R(H)^{c \log^2 h}$ for every acyclic oriented graph $\vec{H}$ with $h$ vertices, where $H$ is its underlying undirected graph. We also study the threshold function for the event $\{G(n,p) \to \vec{H}\}$ in the binomial random graph $G…
A graph G is Ramsey for H if every two-colouring of the edges of G contains a monochromatic copy of H. Two graphs H and H' are Ramsey-equivalent if every graph G is Ramsey for H if and only if it is Ramsey for H'. In this paper, we study the problem of determining which graphs are Ramsey-equivalent to the complete graph K_k. A famous theorem of Nesetril and Rodl implies that any graph H which is Ramsey-equivalent to K_k must contain K_k. We prove that the only connected graph which is Ramsey-equivalent to K_k is itself. This gives a negative answer to the question of Szabo, Zumstein, and Zurch…
This article discusses some recent trends in Ramsey theory on infinite structures. Trees and their Ramsey theory have been vital to these investigations. The main ideas behind the author's recent method of trees with coding nodes are presented, showing how they can be useful both for coding structures with forbidden configurations as well as those with none. Using forcing as a tool for finite searches has allowed the development of Ramsey theory on such trees, leading to solutions for finite big Ramsey degrees of Henson graphs as well as infinite dimensional Ramsey theory of copies of the Rado…
In this paper, we present several density-type theorems which show how to find a copy of a sparse bipartite graph in a graph of positive density. Our results imply several new bounds for classical problems in graph Ramsey theory and improve and generalize earlier results of various researchers. The proofs combine probabilistic arguments with some combinatorial ideas. In addition, these techniques can be used to study properties of graphs with a forbidden induced subgraph, edge intersection patterns in topological graphs, and to obtain several other Ramsey-type statements.
Burr and Erdős in 1975 conjectured, and Chvátal, Rödl, Szemerédi and Trotter later proved, that the Ramsey number of any bounded degree graph is linear in the number of vertices. In this paper, we disprove the natural directed analogue of the Burr--Erdős conjecture, answering a question of Bucić, Letzter, and Sudakov. If $H$ is an acyclic digraph, the oriented Ramsey number of $H$, denoted $\overrightarrow{r_{1}}(H)$, is the least $N$ such that every tournament on $N$ vertices contains a copy of $H$. We show that for any $Δ\geq 2$ and any sufficiently large $n$, there exists an acyclic digraph…
We study automorphism groups of sparse graphs from the viewpoint of topological dynamics and the Kechris, Pestov, Todorčević correspondence. We investigate amenable and extremely amenable subgroups of these groups using the space of orientations of the graph and results from structural Ramsey theory. Resolving one of the open questions in the area, we show that Hrushovski's example of an $ω$-categorical sparse graph has no $ω$-categorical expansion with extremely amenable automorphism group.
