Szemerédi's regularity lemma is a basic tool in graph theory, and also plays an important role in additive combinatorics, most notably in proving Szemerédi's theorem on arithmetic progressions . In this note we revisit this lemma from the perspective of probability theory and information theory instead of graph theory, and observe a variant of this lemma which introduces a new parameter $F$. This stronger version of the regularity lemma was iterated in a recent paper of the author to reprove the analogous regularity lemma for hypergraphs.
We give a short proof of Szemerédi's regularity lemma, based on elementary Euclidean geometry. The general line of the proof is that of the standard proof (in fact, of Szemerédi's original proof), but most technicalities are swallowed by applying Pythagoras' theorem.
Szemerédi's Regularity Lemma is an important tool for analyzing the structure of dense graphs. There are versions of the Regularity Lemma for sparse graphs, but these only apply when the graph satisfies some local density condition. In this paper, we prove a sparse Regularity Lemma that holds for all graphs. More generally, we give a Regularity Lemma that holds for arbitrary real matrices.
In this manuscript we develop a version of Szemerédi's regularity lemma that is suitable for analyzing multicolorings of complete graphs and directed graphs. In this, we follow the proof of Alon, Fischer, Krivelevich and M. Szegedy [Combinatorica, 20(4) (2000), 451--476] who prove a similar result for graphs. The purpose is to extend classical results on dense hereditary properties, such as the speed of the property or edit distance, to the above-mentioned combinatorial objects.
We prove analogues for hypergraphs of Szemerédi's regularity lemma and the associated counting lemma for graphs. As an application, we give the first combinatorial proof of the multidimensional Szemerédi theorem of Furstenberg and Katznelson, and the first proof that provides an explicit bound. Similar results with the same consequences have been obtained independently by Nagle, Rödl, Schacht and Skokan.
We extend Szemeredi's Regularity Lemma (SRL) to abstract measure spaces. Our main aim is to find general conditions under which the original proof of Szemeredi still works. To illustrate that our approach has some merit, we outline several applications. Some of these applications seem to be tailored to our approach: in particular, we are not aware of any alternative proofs.
We show that a sufficiently large graph of bounded degree can be decomposed into quasi-homogeneous pieces. The result can be viewed as a "finitarization" of the classical Farrell-Varadarajan Ergodic Decomposition Theorem.
We prove a variant of the abstract probabilistic version of Szemerédi's regularity lemma, due to Tao, which applies to a number of structures (including graphs, hypergraphs, hypercubes, graphons, and many more) and works for random variables in $L_p$ for any $p>1$. Our approach is based on martingale difference sequences.
Szemeredi's regularity lemma is an important tool in graph theory which has applications throughout combinatorics. In this paper we prove an analogue of Szemeredi's regularity lemma in the context of abelian groups and use it to derive some results in additive number theory. One is a structure theorm for sets which are almost sum-free. If A is a subset of [N] which contains just o(N^2) triples (x,y,z) such that x + y = z then A may be written as the union of B and C, where B is sum-free and |C| = o(N). Another answers a question of Bergelson, Host and Kra. If alpha, epsilon > 0, if N > N_0(alp…
Let $G$ be a $k$-partite graph with $n$ vertices in parts such that each vertex is adjacent to at least $δ^*(G)$ vertices in each of the other parts. Magyar and Martin \cite{MaMa} proved that for $k=3$, if $δ^*(G)\ge 2/3n $ and $n$ is sufficiently large, then $G$ contains a $K_3$-factor (a spanning subgraph consisting of $n$ vertex-disjoint copies of $K_3$) except that $G$ is one particular graph. Martin and Szemerédi \cite{MaSz} proved that $G$ contains a $K_4$-factor when $δ^*(G)\ge 3/4n$ and $n$ is sufficiently large. Both results were proved by the Regularity Lemma. In this paper we give a…
We give a proof of Szemeredi's regularity lemma in the special case of a graph with bounded VC dimension and show that it is possible to obtain "merely" doubly exponential bounds on the size of the partition in this case.
We obtain a hypergraph generalisation of the graph blow-up lemma proved by Komlos, Sarkozy and Szemeredi, showing that hypergraphs with sufficient regularity and no atypical vertices behave as if they were complete for the purpose of embedding bounded degree hypergraphs.
The following sharpening of Turán's theorem is proved. Let $T_{n,p}$ denote the complete $p$--partite graph of order $n$ having the maximum number of edges. If $G$ is an $n$-vertex $K_{p+1}$-free graph with $e(T_{n,p})-t$ edges then there exists an (at most) $p$-chromatic subgraph $H_0$ such that $e(H_0)\geq e(G)-t$. Using this result we present a concise, contemporary proof (i.e., one applying Szemerédi's regularity lemma) for the classical stability result of Simonovits.
We develop a new method for constructing approximate decompositions of dense graphs into sparse graphs and apply it to longstanding decomposition problems. For instance, our results imply the following. Let $G$ be a quasi-random $n$-vertex graph and suppose $H_1,\dots,H_s$ are bounded degree $n$-vertex graphs with $\sum_{i=1}^{s} e(H_i) \leq (1-o(1)) e(G)$. Then $H_1,\dots,H_s$ can be packed edge-disjointly into $G$. The case when $G$ is the complete graph $K_n$ implies an approximate version of the tree packing conjecture of Gyárfás and Lehel for bounded degree trees, and of the Oberwolfach p…
A celebrated result of Gowers states that for every ε> 0 there is a graph G so that every ε-regular partition of G (in the sense of Szemeredi's regularity lemma) has order given by a tower of exponents of height polynomial in 1/ε. In this note we give a new proof of this result that uses a construction and proof of correctness that are significantly simpler and shorter.
Szemerédi's regularity lemma is a fundamental tool in extremal combinatorics. However, the original version is only helpful in studying dense graphs. In the 1990s, Kohayakawa and Rödl proved an analogue of Szemerédi's regularity lemma for sparse graphs as part of a general program toward extending extremal results to sparse graphs. Many of the key applications of Szemerédi's regularity lemma use an associated counting lemma. In order to prove extensions of these results which also apply to sparse graphs, it remained a well-known open problem to prove a counting lemma in sparse graphs. The main…
Szemerédi's regularity lemma is a fundamental tool in extremal graph theory, theoretical computer science and combinatorial number theory. Lovász and Szegedy [L. Lovász and B. Szegedy: Szemerédi's Lemma for the analyst, Geometric and Functional Analysis 17 (2007), 252-270] gave a Hilbert space interpretation of the lemma and an interpretation in terms of compact- ness of the space of graph limits. In this paper we prove several compactness results in a Banach space setting, generalising results of Lovász and Szegedy as well as a result of Borgs, Chayes, Cohn and Zhao [C. Borgs, J.T. Chayes, H.…
Let $X$ be an inner product space, let $G$ be a group of orthogonal transformations of $X$, and let $R$ be a bounded $G$-stable subset of $X$. We define very weak and very strong regularity for such pairs $(R,G)$ (in the sense of Szemerédi's regularity lemma), and prove that these two properties are equivalent. Moreover, these properties are equivalent to the compactness of the space $(B(H),d_R)/G$. Here $H$ is the completion of $X$ (a Hilbert space), $B(H)$ is the unit ball in $H$, $d_R$ is the metric on $H$ given by $d_R(x,y):=\sup_{r\in R}|<r,x-y>|$, and $(B(H),d_R)/G$ is the orbit space of…
A subgraph of an edge-coloured graph is called rainbow if all its edges have different colours. We prove a rainbow version of the blow-up lemma of Komlós, Sárközy and Szemerédi that applies to almost optimally bounded colourings. A corollary of this is that there exists a rainbow copy of any bounded-degree spanning subgraph $H$ in a quasirandom host graph $G$, assuming that the edge-colouring of $G$ fulfills a boundedness condition that is asymptotically best possible. This has many applications beyond rainbow colourings, for example to graph decompositions, orthogonal double covers and graph …
We introduce a permutation analogue of the celebrated Szemeredi Regularity Lemma, and derive a number of consequences. This tool allows us to provide a structural description of permutations which avoid a specified pattern, a result that permutations which scatter small intervals contain all possible patterns of a given size, a proof that every permutation avoiding a specified pattern has a nearly monotone linear-sized subset, and a ``thin deletion'' result. We also show how one can count sub-patterns of a permutation with an integral, and relate our results to permutation quasirandomness in a…
We introduce a new method for decomposing the edge set of a graph, and use it to replace the Regularity lemma of Szemerédi in some graph embedding problems. An algorithmic version is also given.
In 1962 Pósa conjectured that every graph G on n vertices with minimum degree at least 2n/3 contains the square of a hamiltonian cycle. In 1996 Fan and Kierstead proved the path version of Pósa's Conjecture. They also proved that it would suffice to show that G contains the square of a cycle of length greater than 2n/3. Still in 1996, Komlós, Sárközy, and Szemerédi proved Pósa's Conjecture, using the Regularity and Blow-up Lemmas, for graphs of order n > n_0, where n_0 is a very large constant. Here we show without using these lemmas that n_0=2\times 10^8 is sufficient. We are motivated by the…
We say that a (di)graph $G$ has a perfect $H$-packing if there exists a set of vertex-disjoint copies of $H$ which cover all the vertices in $G$. The seminal Hajnal--Szemerédi theorem characterises the minimum degree that ensures a graph $G$ contains a perfect $K_r$-packing. In this paper we prove the following analogue for directed graphs: Suppose that $T$ is a tournament on $r$ vertices and $G$ is a digraph of sufficiently large order $n$ where $r$ divides $n$. If $G$ has minimum in- and outdegree at least $ (1-1/r)n$ then $G$ contains a perfect $T$-packing. In the case when $T$ is a cyclic …
The triangle removal lemma states that a simple graph with o(n^3) triangles can be made triangle-free by removing o(n^2) edges. It is natural to ask if this widely used result can be extended to multi-graphs (or equivalently, weighted graphs). In this short paper we rule out the possibility of such an extension by showing that there are multi-graphs with only n^{2+o(1)} triangles that are still far from being triangle-free. On the other hand, we show that for some g(n)=ω(1), if a multi-graph (or weighted graph) has only g(n)n^2 triangles then it must be close to being triangle-free. The proof …
Szemeredi's regularity lemma is one instance in a family of regularity lemmas, replacing the definition of density of a graph by a more general coefficient. Recently, Fan Chung proved another instance, a regularity lemma for clustering graphs, and asked whether good upper bounds could be derived for the quantitative estimates it supplies. We answer this question in the negative, for every generalized regularity lemma.
Let H be a fixed graph with h vertices. The graph removal lemma states that every graph on n vertices with o(n^h) copies of H can be made H-free by removing o(n^2) edges. We give a new proof which avoids Szemerédi's regularity lemma and gives a better bound. This approach also works to give improved bounds for the directed and multicolored analogues of the graph removal lemma. This answers questions of Alon and Gowers.
In graph theory, the Szemerédi regularity lemma gives a decomposition of the indicator function for any graph $G$ into a structured component, a uniform part, and a small error. This result, in conjunction with a counting lemma that guarantees many copies of a subgraph $H$ provided a copy of $H$ appears in the structured component, is used in many applications to extremal problems. An analogous decomposition theorem exists for functions over $\mathbb{F}_p^n$. Specializing to $p=2$, we obtain a statement about the indicator functions of simple binary matroids. In this paper we extend previous r…
We prove a version of Szemeredi's regularity lemma for subsets of a typical random set in F_p^n. As an application, a result on the distribution of three-term arithmetic progressions in sparse sets is discussed.
The regularity lemma of Szemeredi asserts that one can partition every graph into a bounded number of quasi-random bipartite graphs. In some applications however, one would like to have a strong control on how quasi-random these bipartite graphs are. Alon, Fischer, Krivelevich and Szegedy obtained a powerful variant of the regularity lemma, which allows one to have an arbitrary control on this measure of quasi-randomness. However, their proof only guaranteed to produce a partition where the number of parts is given by the Wowzer function, which is the iterated version of the Tower function. We…
In this paper we give a proof of Enomoto's conjecture for graphs of sufficiently large order. Enomoto's conjecture states that, if $G$ is a graph of order $n$ with minimum degree $δ(G)\geq \frac{n}{2}+1$, then for any pair of vertices $x$, $y$ in $G$, there is a Hamiltonian cycle $C$ of $G$ such that $d_C(x,y)=\lfloor \frac{n}{2}\rfloor$. The main tools of our proof are Regularity Lemma of Szemerédi and Blow-up Lemma of Komlós et al.
Lehel conjectured that in every $2$-coloring of the edges of $K_n$, there is a vertex disjoint red and blue cycle which span $V(K_n)$. Łuczak, Rödl, and Szemerédi proved Lehel's conjecture for large $n$, Allen gave a different proof for large $n$, and finally Bessy and Thomassé gave a proof for all $n$. Balogh, Barát, Gerbner, Gyárfás, and Sárközy proposed a significant strengthening of Lehel's conjecture where $K_n$ is replaced by any graph $G$ with $δ(G)> 3n/4$; if true, this minimum degree condition is essentially best possible. We prove that their conjecture holds when $δ(G)>(3/4+o(1))n$. …
We introduce a new variant of Szemerédi's regularity lemma which we call the "sparse regular approximation lemma" (SRAL). The input to this lemma is a graph $G$ of edge density $p$ and parameters $ε, δ$, where we think of $δ$ as a constant. The goal is to construct an $ε$-regular partition of $G$ while having the freedom to add/remove up to $δ|E(G)|$ edges. As we show here, this weaker variant of the regularity lemma already suffices for proving the graph removal lemma and the hypergraph regularity lemma, which are two of the main applications of the (standard) regularity lemma. This of course…
Let G be a finite graph with the non-k-order property (essentially, a uniform finite bound on the size of an induced sub-half-graph). A major result of the paper applies model-theoretic arguments to obtain a stronger version of Szemerédi's regularity lemma for such graphs, Theorem 5.18, in which there are no irregular pairs, the bounds are significantly improved, and each component satisfies an indivisibility condition. Motivation for this work comes from a coincidence of model-theoretic and graph-theoretic ideas. Namely, it was known that the "irregular pairs" in the statement of Szemerédi's …
The hypergraph regularity lemma -- the extension of Szemerédi's graph regularity lemma to the setting of $k$-uniform hypergraphs -- is one of the most celebrated combinatorial results obtained in the past decade. By now there are several (very different) proofs of this lemma, obtained by Gowers, by Nagle-Rödl-Schacht-Skokan and by Tao. Unfortunately, what all these proofs have in common is that they yield regular partitions whose order is given by the $k$-th Ackermann function. In a recent paper we have shown that these bounds are unavoidable for $3$-uniform hypergraphs. In this paper we exten…
In a recent work, Allen, Böttcher, Hàn, Kohayakawa, and Person provided a first general analogue of the blow-up lemma applicable to sparse (pseudo)random graphs thus generalising the classic tool of Komlós, Sárközy, and Szemerédi. Roughly speaking, they showed that with high probability in the random graph $G_{n,p}$ for $p \geq C(\log n/n)^{1/Δ}$, sparse regular pairs behave similarly as complete bipartite graphs with respect to embedding a spanning graph $H$ with $Δ(H) \leq Δ$. However, this is typically only optimal when $Δ\in \{2,3\}$ and $H$ either contains a triangle ($Δ= 2$) or many copi…
We present a unified approach to proving Ramsey-type theorems for graphs with a forbidden induced subgraph which can be used to extend and improve the earlier results of Rodl, Erdos-Hajnal, Promel-Rodl, Nikiforov, Chung-Graham, and Luczak-Rodl. The proofs are based on a simple lemma (generalizing one by Graham, Rodl, and Rucinski) that can be used as a replacement for Szemeredi's regularity lemma, thereby giving much better bounds. The same approach can be also used to show that pseudo-random graphs have strong induced Ramsey properties. This leads to explicit constructions for upper bounds on…
As an application of Szemeredi's regularity lemma, Erdos-Frankl-Rodl (1986) showed that the number of graphs on vertex set {1,2,...n} with a monotone class P is $2^{(1+o(1))ex(n,P)n^2/2}$ where $ex(n,P)$ is the maximum number of edges of an n-vertex graph which has no subgraph in P. Kohayakawa et al. (2003) extended it from monotone to hereditary and from graphs to 3-uniform hypergraphs. We extend it to general hypergraphs. This may be a simple example illustrating how to apply a recent hypergraph regularity lemma by the author.
We prove a regularity lemma with respect to arbitrary Keisler measures mu on V, nu on W where the bipartite graph (V,W,R) is definable in a saturated structure M and the formula R(x,y) is stable. The proof is rather quick and uses local stability theory. The special case where (V,W,R) is pseudofinite, mu, nu are the counting measures and M is suitably chosen (for example a nonstandard model of set theory), yields the stable regularity theorem of Malliaris-Shelah (Transactions AMS, 366, 2014, 1551-1585), though without explicit bounds or equitability.
In this note we observe that in the hyper-graph removal lemma the edge removal can be done in a way that the symmetries of the original hyper-graph remain preserved. As an application we prove the following generalization of Szemerédi's Theorem on arithmetic progressions. If in an Abelian group $A$ there are sets $S_1,S_2...,S_t$ such that the number of arithmetic progressions $x_1,x_2,...,x_t$ with $x_i\in S_i$ is $o(|A|^2)$ then we can shrink each $S_i$ by $o(|A|)$ elements such that the new sets don't have such a diagonal arithmetic progression.
In 2001, Komlós, Sárközy and Szemerédi proved that, for each $α>0$, there is some $c>0$ and $n_0$ such that, if $n\geq n_0$, then every $n$-vertex graph with minimum degree at least $(1/2+α)n$ contains a copy of every $n$-vertex tree with maximum degree at most $cn/\log n$. We prove the corresponding result for directed graphs. That is, for each $α>0$, there is some $c>0$ and $n_0$ such that, if $n\geq n_0$, then every $n$-vertex directed graph with minimum semi-degree at least $(1/2+α)n$ contains a copy of every $n$-vertex oriented tree whose underlying maximum degree is at most $cn/\log n$. …
Szemeredi's regularity lemma can be viewed as a rough structure theorem for arbitrary dense graphs, decomposing such graphs into a structured piece (a partition into cells with edge densities), a small error (corresponding to irregular cells), and a uniform piece (the pseudorandom deviations from the edge densities). We establish an arithmetic regularity lemma that similarly decomposes bounded functions f : [N] -> C, into a (well-equidistributed, virtual) -step nilsequence, an error which is small in L^2 and a further error which is miniscule in the Gowers U^{s+1}-norm, where s is a positive i…
Szemerédi's regularity lemma and its variants are some of the most powerful tools in combinatorics. In this paper, we establish several results around the regularity lemma. First, we prove that whether or not we include the condition that the desired vertex partition in the regularity lemma is equitable has a minimal effect on the number of parts of the partition. Second, we use an algorithmic version of the (weak) Frieze--Kannan regularity lemma to give a substantially faster deterministic approximation algorithm for counting subgraphs in a graph. Previously, only an exponential dependence fo…
A common theme in many extremal problems in graph theory is the relation between local and global properties of graphs. One of the most celebrated results of this type is the Ruzsa-Szemerédi triangle removal lemma, which states that if a graph is $\varepsilon$-far from being triangle free, then most subsets of vertices of size $C(\varepsilon)$ are not triangle free. Unfortunately, the best known upper bound on $C(\varepsilon)$ is given by a tower-type function, and it is known that $C(\varepsilon)$ is not polynomial in $\varepsilon^{-1}$. The triangle removal lemma has been extended to many ot…
In this work, we give a structural lemma on merges of typical sequences, a notion that was introduced in 1991 [Lagergren and Arnborg, Bodlaender and Kloks, both ICALP 1991] to obtain constructive linear time parameterized algorithms for treewidth and pathwidth. The lemma addresses a runtime bottleneck in those algorithms but so far it does not lead to asymptotically faster algorithms. However, we apply the lemma to show that the cutwidth and the modified cutwidth of series parallel digraphs can be computed in $\mathcal{O}(n^2)$ time.
Obtaining an efficient bound for the triangle removal lemma is one of the most outstanding open problems of extremal combinatorics. Perhaps the main bottleneck for achieving this goal is that triangle-free graphs can be highly unstructured. For example, triangle-free graphs might have only regular partitions (in the sense of Szemerédi) of tower-type size. And indeed, essentially all the graph properties ${\cal P}$ for which removal lemmas with reasonable bounds were obtained, are such that every graph satisfying ${\cal P}$ has a small regular partition. So in some sense, a barrier for obtainin…
Suppose one needs to change the direction of at least $εn^2$ edges of an $n$-vertex tournament $T$, in order to make it $H$-free. A standard application of the regularity method shows that in this case $T$ contains at least $f^*_H(ε)n^h$ copies of $H$, where $f^*_H$ is some tower-type function. It has long been observed that many graph/digraph problems become easier when assuming that the host graph is a tournament. It is thus natural to ask if the removal lemma becomes easier if we assume that the digraph $G$ is a tournament. Our main result here is a precise characterization of the tournamen…
The hypergraph regularity lemma -- the extension of Szemerédi's graph regularity lemma to the setting of $k$-uniform hypergraphs -- is one of the most celebrated combinatorial results obtained in the past decade. By now there are several (very different) proofs of this lemma, obtained by Gowers, by Nagle-Rödl-Schacht-Skokan and by Tao. Unfortunately, what all these proofs have in common is that they yield regular partitions whose order is given by the $k$-th Ackermann function. We show that such Ackermann-type bounds are unavoidable for every $k \ge 2$, thus confirming a prediction of Tao. Pri…
We introduce a correspondence principle (analogous to the Furstenberg correspondence principle) that allows one to extract an infinite random graph or hypergraph from a sequence of increasingly large deterministic graphs or hypergraphs. As an application we present a new (infinitary) proof of the hypergraph removal lemma of Nagle-Schacht-Rödl-Skokan and Gowers, which does not require the hypergraph regularity lemma and requires significantly less computation. This in turn gives new proofs of several corollaries of the hypergraph removal lemma, such as Szemerédi's theorem on arithmetic progress…
Szemerédi's regularity lemma is a powerful tool in graph theory. It states that for every large enough graph, there exists a partition of the edge set with bounded size such that most induced subgraphs are quasirandom. When the graph is a definable set $ϕ(x, y)$ in a finite field $F_q$, Tao's algebraic graph regularity lemma shows that there is a partition of the graph $ϕ(x, y)$ such that all induced subgraphs are quasirandom and the error bound on quasirandomness is $O(q^{-1/4})$. In this work we prove an algebraic hypergraph regularity lemma for definable sets in finite fields, thus answerin…
By using the Szemerédi Regularity Lemma, Alon and Sudakov recently extended the classical Andrásfai-Erdõs-Sós theorem to cover general graphs. We prove, without using the Regularity Lemma, that the following stronger statement is true. Given any (r-1)-partite graph H whose smallest part has t vertices, and any fixed c>0, there exists a constant C such that whenever G is an n-vertex graph with minimum degree at least ((3r-4)/(3r-1)+c)n, either G contains H, or we can delete at most Cn^(2-1/t) edges from G to yield an r-partite graph.
This MSci thesis surveys results in extremal graph theory, in particular relating to Hamilton cycles. Szeméredi's Regularity Lemma plays a central role. We also investigate the robust outexpansion property for digraphs. Kelly showed that every sufficiently large oriented graph on $n$ vertices with minimum in- and outdegree at least $3n/8 +o(n)$ contains any orientation of a Hamilton cycle. We use Kelly's arguments to extend his result to any robustly expanding digraph of linear degree.
Kim, Kühn, Osthus and Tyomkyn (Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 371 (2019), 4655--4742) greatly extended the well-known blow-up lemma of Komlós, Sárközy and Szemerédi by proving a `blow-up lemma for approximate decompositions' which states that multipartite quasirandom graphs can be almost decomposed into any collection of bounded degree graphs with the same multipartite structure and slightly fewer edges. This result has already been used by Joos, Kim, Kühn and Osthus to prove the tree packing conjecture due to Gyárfás and Lehel from 1976 and Ringel's conjecture from 1963 for bounded degree trees as w…
