Let $TT_k$ denote the transitive tournament on $k$ vertices. Let $TT(h,k)$ denote the graph obtained from $TT_k$ by replacing each vertex with an independent set of size $h \geq 1$. The following result is proved: Let $c_2=1/2$, $c_3=5/6$ and $c_k=1-2^{-k-\log k}$ for $k \geq 4$. For every $ε> 0$ there exists $N=N(ε,h,k)$ such that for every undirected graph $G$ with $n > N$ vertices and with $δ(G) \geq c_kn$, every orientation of $G$ contains vertex disjoint copies of $TT(h,k)$ that cover all but at most $εn$ vertices. In the cases $k=2$ and $k=3$ the result is asymptotically tight. For $k \geq 4$, $c_k$ cannot be improved to less than $1-2^{-0.5k(1+o(1))}$.
We prove that a tournament with $n$ vertices has more than $0.13n^2(1+o(1))$ edge-disjoint transitive triples. We also prove some results on the existence of large packings of $k$-vertex transitive tournaments in an $n$-vertex tournament. Our proofs combine probabilistic arguments and some powerful packing results due to Wilson and to Frankl and Rödl.
We construct a combinatorial function F which computes the number of oriented Hamiltonian paths of any given type, in a transitive tournament. We also study many properties of F that arise, and reach some observations.
We prove the existence of a function $h(k)$ such that every simple digraph with minimum outdegree greater than $h(k)$ contains an immersion of the transitive tournament on $k$ vertices. This solves a conjecture of Devos, McDonald, Mohar and Scheide.
We prove that for every fixed $k$, the number of occurrences of the transitive tournament $Tr_k$ of order $k$ in a tournament $T_n$ on $n$ vertices is asymptotically minimized when $T_n$ is random. In the opposite direction, we show that any sequence of tournaments $\{T_n\}$ achieving this minimum for any fixed $k\geq 4$ is necessarily quasi-random. We present several other characterizations of quasi-random tournaments nicely complementing previously known results and relatively easily following from our proof techniques.
We further study sets of labeled dice in which the relation "is a better die than" is non-transitive. Focusing on sets with an additional symmetry we call "balance," we prove that sets of $n$ such $m$-sided dice exist for all $n,m \geq 3$. We then show how to construct a set of $n$ dice such that the relation behaves according to the direction of the arrows of any tournament (complete directed graph) on $n$ vertices.
Let $\vec{T}_k$ be the transitive tournament on $k$ vertices. We show that every oriented graph on $n=4m$ vertices with minimum total degree $(11/12+o(1))n$ can be partitioned into vertex disjoint $\vec{T}_4$'s, and this bound is asymptotically tight. We also improve the best known bound on the minimum total degree for partitioning oriented graphs into vertex disjoint $\vec{T}_k$'s.
The oriented Ramsey number $\vec{r}(H)$ for an acyclic digraph $H$ is the minimum integer $n$ such that any $n$-vertex tournament contains a copy of $H$ as a subgraph. We prove that the $1$-subdivision of the $k$-vertex transitive tournament $H_k$ satisfies $\vec{r}(H_k)= O(k^2\log\log k)$. This is tight up to multiplicative $\log\log k$-term. We also show that if $T$ is an $n$-vertex tournament with $Δ^+(T)-δ^+(T)= O(n/k) - k^2$, then $T$ contains a $1$-subdivision of $\vec{K}_k$, a complete $k$-vertex digraph with all possible $k(k-1)$ arcs. This is also tight up to multiplicative constant.
A tournament is called locally transitive if the outneighbourhood and the inneighbourhood of every vertex are transitive. Equivalently, a tournament is locally transitive if it avoids the tournaments $W_4$ and $L_4$, which are the only tournaments up to isomorphism on four vertices containing a unique $3$-cycle. On the other hand, a sequence of tournaments $(T_n)_{n\in\mathbb{N}}$ with $|V(T_n)| = n$ is called almost balanced if all but $o(n)$ vertices of $T_n$ have outdegree $(1/2 + o(1))n$. In the same spirit of quasi-random properties, we present several characterizations of tournament sequ…
In an earlier paper the first two authors have shown that self-complementary graphs can always be oriented in such a way that the union of the oriented version and its isomorphically oriented complement gives a transitive tournament. We investigate the possibilities of generalizing this theorem to decompositions of the complete graph into three or more isomorphic graphs. We find that a complete characterization of when an orientation with similar properties is possible seems elusive. Nevertheless, we give sufficient conditions that generalize the earlier theorem and also imply that decompositi…
The study of problems concerning subdivisions of graphs has a rich history in extremal combinatorics. Confirming a conjecture of Burr and Erdős, Alon proved in 1994 that subdivided graphs have linear Ramsey numbers. Later, Alon, Krivelevich and Sudakov showed that every $n$-vertex graph with at least $\varepsilon n^2$ edges contains a $1$-subdivision of the complete graph on $c_{\varepsilon}\sqrt{n}$ vertices, resolving another old conjecture of Erdős. In this paper we consider the directed analogue of these problems and show that every tournament on at least $(2+o(1))k^2$ vertices contains th…
Ladder tournaments are widely used to rank individuals in real-world organizations and games. Their mathematical properties however are still poorly understood. We formalize the ranking rule generated by a ladder tournament, and we show that it is neither complete nor transitive in general. If it is complete, then it is transitive and its asymmetric component is a finite union of transitive tournaments. We also study the relationship between an individual's rank and his performance as measured by the frequency at which he is pivotal. We show an individual's pivotability is a weakly increasing …
Tournaments are graphs obtained by assigning a direction for every edge in an undirected complete graph. We give a formula for the number of isomorphism classes of vertex-transitive tournaments with prime order. For that, we introduce Cayley tournaments, which are special Cayley digraphs, and show that there is a one to one identification between the isomorphism classes of vertex-transitive tournaments with prime order and the isomorphism classes of Cayley tournaments with prime order.
If $T$ is an $n$-vertex tournament with a given number of $3$-cycles, what can be said about the number of its $4$-cycles? The most interesting range of this problem is where $T$ is assumed to have $c\cdot n^3$ cyclic triples for some $c>0$ and we seek to minimize the number of $4$-cycles. We conjecture that the (asymptotic) minimizing $T$ is a random blow-up of a constant-sized transitive tournament. Using the method of flag algebras, we derive a lower bound that almost matches the conjectured value. We are able to answer the easier problem of maximizing the number of $4$-cycles. These questi…
A tournament is $k$-spectrally monomorphic if all the $k\times k$ principal submatrices of its adjacency matrix have the same characteristic polynomial. Transitive $n$-tournaments are trivially $k$-spectrally monomorphic. We show that there are no other for $k\in \{3,\ldots,n-3\} $. Furthermore, we prove that for $n\geq 5$, a non-transitive $n$-tournament is $(n-2)$-spectrally monomorphic if and only if it is doubly regular. Finally, we give some results on $(n-1)$-spectrally monomorphic regular tournaments.
Let $T$ be a tournament with nondecreasing score sequence $R$ and $A$ be its tournament matrix. An upset of $T$ corresponds to an entry above the main diagonal of $A$. Given a feasible score sequence $R$, Fulkerson~(1965) gave a simple recursive construction for a tournament with score sequence $R$ and the minimum number of upsets, and Hacioglu et al. (2019) provided a construction for all of such tournament matrices. Let $U_{\min}(R)$ denote the set of tournament matrices with score sequence $R$ that have minimum number of upsets. Brauldi and Li~(1983) characterized the strong score sequences…
The Erdős-Hajnal conjecture states that for every given undirected graph $H$ there exists a constant $c(H)>0$ such that every graph $G$ that does not contain $H$ as an induced subgraph contains a clique or a stable set of size at least $|V(G)|^{c(H)}$. The conjecture is still open. Its equivalent directed version states that for every given tournament $H$ there exists a constant $c(H)>0$ such that every $H$-free tournament $T$ contains a transitive subtournament of order at least $|V(T)|^{c(H)}$. We prove in this paper that $\{H_{1},H_{2}\}$-free tournaments $T$ contain transitive subtournamen…
Solving the kernel perfect problem by (simple) forbidden subdigraphs for digraphs in some families of generalized tournaments and generalized bipartite tournaments
A tournament H is quasirandom-forcing if the following holds for every sequence (G_n) of tournaments of growing orders: if the density of H in G_n converges to the expected density of H in a random tournament, then (G_n) is quasirandom. Every transitive tournament with at least 4 vertices is quasirandom-forcing, and Coregliano et al. [Electron. J. Combin. 26 (2019), P1.44] showed that there is also a non-transitive 5-vertex tournament with the property. We show that no additional tournament has this property. This extends the result of Bucic et al. [Combinatorica 41 (2021), 175-208] that the n…
A celebrated unresolved conjecture of Erdös and Hajnal states that for every undirected graph $H$ there exists $ ε(H) > 0 $ such that every undirected graph on $ n $ vertices that does not contain $H$ as an induced subgraph contains a clique or a stable set of size at least $ n^{ε(H)} $. This conjecture has a directed equivalent version stating that for every tournament $H$ there exists $ ε(H) > 0 $ such that every $H-$free $n-$vertex tournament $T$ contains a transitive subtournament of size at least $ n^{ε(H)} $. Recently the conjecture was proved for all six-vertex tournaments, except $K_{6…
An edge coloring of a tournament $T$ with colors $1,2,\dots,k$ is called \it $k$-transitive \rm if the digraph $T(i)$ defined by the edges of color $i$ is transitively oriented for each $1\le i \le k$. We explore a conjecture of the second author: For each positive integer $k$ there exists a (least) $p(k)$ such that every $k$-transitive tournament has a dominating set of at most $p(k)$ vertices. We show how this conjecture relates to other conjectures and results. For example, it is a special case of a well-known conjecture of Erd\H os, Sands, Sauer and Woodrow (so the conjecture is interestin…
Motivated by his work on the classification of countable homogeneous oriented graphs, Cherlin asked about the typical structure of oriented graphs (i) without a transitive triangle, or (ii) without an oriented triangle. We give an answer to these questions (which is not quite the predicted one). Our approach is based on the recent `hypergraph containers' method, developed independently by Saxton and Thomason as well as by Balogh, Morris and Samotij. Moreover, our results generalise to forbidden transitive tournaments and forbidden oriented cycles of any order, and also apply to digraphs. Along…
Let $U_5$ be the tournament with vertices $v_1$, ..., $v_5$ such that $v_2 \rightarrow v_1$, and $v_i \rightarrow v_j$ if $j-i \equiv 1$, $2 \pmod{5}$ and ${i,j} \neq {1,2}$. In this paper we describe the tournaments which do not have $U_5$ as a subtournament. Specifically, we show that if a tournament $G$ is "prime"---that is, if there is no subset $X \subseteq V(G)$, $1 < |X| < |V(G)|$, such that for all $v \in V(G) \backslash X$, either $v \rightarrow x$ for all $x \in X$ or $x \rightarrow v$ for all $x \in X$---then $G$ is $U_5$-free if and only if either $G$ is a specific tournament $T_n$…
We show that for every positive integer $k$, any tournament can be partitioned into at most $2^{ck}$ $k$-th powers of paths. This result is tight up to the exponential constant. Moreover, we prove that for every $\varepsilon>0$ and every integer $k$, any tournament on $n\ge \varepsilon^{-Ck}$ vertices which is $\varepsilon$-far from being transitive contains the $k$-th power of a cycle of length $Ω(\varepsilon n)$; both bounds are tight up to the implied constants.
In this paper, we give a direct construction for a set of dice realizing any given tournament $T$. The construction for a tournament with $n$ vertices requires a number of sides on the order of $n$, which appears to be the best general construction to date. Our construction relies only on a standard theorem from graph theory.
We study a high-dimensional analog for the notion of an acyclic (aka transitive) tournament. We give upper and lower bounds on the number of $d$-dimensional $n$-vertex acyclic tournaments. In addition, we prove that every $n$-vertex $d$-dimensional tournament contains an acyclic subtournament of $Ω(\log^{1/d}n)$ vertices and the bound is tight. This statement for tournaments (i.e., the case $d=1$) is a well-known fact. We indicate a connection between acyclic high-dimensional tournaments and Ramsey numbers of hypergraphs. We investigate as well the inter-relations among various other notions o…
In this paper, we consider upper bounds on the size of transitive subtournaments in a digraph. In particular, we give an analogy of Hoffman's bound for the size of cocliques in a regular graph. Furthermore, we partially improve the Hoffman type bound for doubly regular tournaments by using the technique of Greaves and Soicher for strongly regular graphs [4], which gives a new application of block intersection polynomials.
We investigate the \emph{last passage percolation} problem on transitive tournaments, in the case when the edge weights are independent Bernoulli random variables. Given a transitive tournament on $n$ nodes with random weights on its edges, the last passage percolation problem seeks to find the weight $X_n$ of the heaviest path, where the weight of a path is the sum of the weights on its edges. We give a recurrence relation and use it to obtain a (bivariate) generating function for the probability generating function of $X_n$. This also gives exact combinatorial expressions for $\mathbb{E}[X_n…
The celebrated Erdös-Hajnal conjecture states that for every undirected graph $H$ there exists $ ε(H) > 0 $ such that every undirected graph on $ n $ vertices that does not contain $H$ as an induced subgraph contains a clique or a stable set of size at least $ n^{ε(H)} $. This conjecture has a directed equivalent version stating that for every tournament $H$ there exists $ ε(H) > 0 $ such that every $H$-free $n$-vertex tournament $T$ contains a transitive subtournament of order at least $ n^{ε(H)} $. This conjecture is proved for few infinite families of tournaments. In this paper we construct…
A $k$-majority digraph is a directed graph created by combining $k$ individual rankings on the same ground set to form a consensus where edges point in the direction indicated by a strict majority of the rankings. The $k$-majority digraph is used to model voting scenarios, where the vertices correspond to options ranked by $k$ voters. When $k$ is odd, the resulting digraph is always a tournament, called $k$-majority tournament. Let $f_k(n)$ be the minimum, over all $k$-majority tournaments with $n$ vertices, of the maximum order of an induced transitive sub-tournament. Recently, Milans, Schrei…
We propose a purely combinatorial quadratic time algorithm that for any $n$-vertex $P_{k}$-free tournament $T$, where $P_{k}$ is a directed path of length $k$, finds in $T$ a transitive subset of order $n^{\frac{c}{k\log(k)^{2}}}$. As a byproduct of our method, we obtain subcubic $O(n^{1-\frac{c}{k\log(k)^{2}}})$-approximation algorithm for the optimal acyclic coloring problem on $P_{k}$-free tournaments. Our results are tight up to the $\log(k)$-factor in the following sense: there exist infinite families of $P_{k}$-free tournaments with largest transitive subsets of order at most $n^{\frac{c…
Tournaments are orientations of the complete graph, and the directed Ramsey number $R(k)$ is the minimum number of vertices a tournament must have to be guaranteed to contain a transitive subtournament of size $k$, which we denote by $TT_k$. We include a computer-assisted proof of a conjecture by Sanchez-Flores that all $TT_6$-free tournaments on 24 and 25 vertices are subtournaments of $ST_{27}$, the unique largest TT_6-free tournament. We also classify all $TT_6$-free tournaments on 23 vertices. We use these results, combined with assistance from SAT technology, to obtain the following impro…
A conjecture of Alon, Pach and Solymosi, which is equivalent to the celebrated Erdős-Hajnal Conjecture, states that for every tournament $S$ there exists $ε(S)>0$ such that if $T$ is an $n$-vertex tournament that does not contains $S$ as a subtournament, then $T$ contains a transitive subtournament on at least $n^{ε(S)}$ vertices. Let $C_5$ be the unique five-vertex tournament where every vertex has two inneighbors and two outneighbors. The Alon-Pach-Solymosi conjecture is known to be true for the case when $S=C_5$. Here we prove a strengthening of this result, showing that in every tournament…
The \emph{chromatic number} of a directed graph $D$ is the minimum number of colors needed to color the vertices of $D$ such that each color class of $D$ induces an acyclic subdigraph. Thus, the chromatic number of a tournament $T$ is the minimum number of transitive subtournaments which cover the vertex set of $T$. We show in this paper that tournaments are significantly simpler than graphs with respect to coloring. Indeed, while undirected graphs can be altogether "locally simple" (every neighborhood is a stable set) and have large chromatic number, we show that locally simple tournaments ar…
Erdös-Hajnal conjecture states that for every undirected graph $H$ there exists $ ε(H) > 0 $ such that every undirected graph on $ n $ vertices that does not contain $H$ as an induced subgraph contains a clique or a stable set of size at least $ n^{ε(H)} $. This conjecture has a directed equivalent version stating that for every tournament $H$ there exists $ ε(H) > 0 $ such that every $H-$free $n-$vertex tournament $T$ contains a transitive subtournament of order at least $ n^{ε(H)} $. This conjecture is known to hold for a few infinite families of tournaments. In this paper we construct two n…
The Rényi $α$-entropy $H_α$ of complete antisymmetric directed graphs (i.e., tournaments) is explored. We optimize $H_α$ when $α= 2$ and $3$, and find that as $α$ increases $H_α$'s sensitivity to what we refer to as `regularity' increases as well. A regular tournament on $n$ vertices is one with each vertex having out-degree $\frac{n-1}{2}$, but there is a lot of diversity in terms of structure among the regular tournaments; for example, a regular tournament may be such that each vertex's out-set induces a regular tournament (a doubly-regular tournament) or a transitive tournament (a rotationa…
A celebrated unresolved conjecture of Erdős and Hajnal states that for every undirected graph $H$ there exists $ε(H)>0$ such that every undirected graph on $n$ vertices that does not contain $H$ as an induced subgraph contains a clique or stable set of size at least $n^{ε(H)}$. The conjecture has a directed equivalent version stating that for every tournament $H$ there exists $ε(H)>0$ such that every $H$-free $n$-vertex tournament $T$ contains a transitive subtournament of order at least $n^{ε(H)}$. We say that a tournament is \textit{prime} if it does not have nontrivial homogeneous sets. So …
The Cayley graph construction provides a natural grid structure on a finite vector space over a field of prime or prime square cardinality, where the characteristic is congruent to 3 modulo 4, in addition to the quadratic residue tournament structure on the prime subfield. Distance from the null vector in the grid graph defines a Manhattan norm. The Hermitian inner product on these spaces over finite fields behaves in some respects similarly to the real and complex case. An analogue of the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality is valid with respect to the Manhattan norm. With respect to the non-transitive…
A celebrated unresolved conjecture of Erdös and Hajnal states that for every undirected graph $H$ there exists $ ε(H) > 0 $ such that every undirected graph on $ n $ vertices that does not contain $H$ as an induced subgraph contains a clique or a stable set of size at least $ n^{ε(H)} $. The conjecture has a directed equivalent version stating that for every tournament $H$ there exists $ ε(H) > 0 $ such that every $H-$free $n-$vertex tournament $T$ contains a transitive subtournament of order at least $ n^{ε(H)} $. Both the directed and the undirected versions of the conjecture are known to be…
We study $k$-colored kernels in $m$-colored digraphs. An $m$-colored digraph $D$ has $k$-colored kernel if there exists a subset $K$ of its vertices such that (i) from every vertex $v\notin K$ there exists an at most $k$-colored directed path from $v$ to a vertex of $K$ and (ii) for every $u,v\in K$ there does not exist an at most $k$-colored directed path between them. In this paper, we prove that for every integer $k\geq 2$ there exists a $% (k+1)$-colored digraph $D$ without $k$-colored kernel and if every directed cycle of an $m$-colored digraph is monochromatic, then it has a $k$-colored …
Let $D_k$ denote the tournament on $3k$ vertices consisting of three disjoint vertex classes $V_1, V_2$ and $V_3$ of size $k$, each of which is oriented as a transitive subtournament, and with edges directed from $V_1$ to $V_2$, from $V_2$ to $V_3$ and from $V_3$ to $V_1$. Fox and Sudakov proved that given a natural number $k$ and $ε> 0$ there is $n_0(k,ε)$ such that every tournament of order $n_0(k,ε)$ which is $ε$-far from being transitive contains $D_k$ as a subtournament. Their proof showed that $n_0(k,ε) \leq ε^{-O(k/ε^2)}$ and they conjectured that this could be reduced to $n_0(k,ε) \leq…
We conjecture that every oriented graph $G$ on $n$ vertices with $δ^+ (G) , δ^- (G) \geq 5n/12$ contains the square of a Hamilton cycle. We also give a conjectural bound on the minimum semidegree which ensures a perfect packing of transitive triangles in an oriented graph. A link between Ramsey numbers and perfect packings of transitive tournaments is also considered.
An equivalent directed version of the celebrated unresolved conjecture of Erdos and Hajnal proposed by Alon et al. states that for every tournament H there exists epsilon(H) > 0 such that every H-free n-vertex tournament T contains a transitive subtournament of order at least n^(epsilon(H)). A tournament H has the strong EH-property if there exists c > 0 such that for every H-free tournament T with |T| > 1, there exist disjoint vertex subsets A and B, each of cardinality at least c|T| and every vertex of A is adjacent to every vertex of B. Berger et al. proved that the unique five-vertex tourn…
In this thesis we prove a variety of theorems on tournaments. A \emph{prime} tournament is a tournament $G$ such that there is no $X \subseteq V(G)$, $1 < |X| < |V(G)|$, such that for every vertex $v \in V(G) \minus X$, either $v \ra x$ for all $x \in X$ or $x \ra v$ for all $x \in X$. First, we prove that given a prime tournament $G$ which is not in one of three special families of tournaments, for any prime subtournament $H$ of $G$ with $5 \le |V(H)| < |V(G)|$ there exists a prime subtournament of $G$ with $|V(H)| + 1$ vertices that has a subtournament isomorphic to $H$. We next prove that f…
Seymour's second neighbourhood conjecture asserts that every oriented graph has a vertex whose second out-neighbourhood is at least as large as its out-neighbourhood. In this paper, we prove that the conjecture holds for quasi-transitive oriented graphs, which is a superclass of tournaments and transitive acyclic digraphs. A digraph $D$ is called quasi-transitive is for every pair $xy,yz$ of arcs between distinct vertices $x,y,z$, $xz$ or $zx$ ("or" is inclusive here) is in $D$.
