Non-uniform pairwise cross $t$-intersecting families

Abstract

Let $ n\geq t\geq 1$ and $ \mathcal{A}_1, \mathcal{A}_2, \ldots, \mathcal{A}_m \subseteq 2^{[n]}$ be non-empty families. We say that they are pairwise cross $t$-intersecting if $|A_i\cap A_j|\geq t$ holds for any $A_i\in \mathcal{A}_i$ and $A_j\in \mathcal{A}_j$ with $i\neq j$. In the case where $m=2$ and $\mathcal{A}_1=\mathcal{A}_2$, determining the maximum size $M(n,t)$ of a non-uniform $t$-intersecting family of sets over $[n]$ was solved by Katona (1964), and enhanced by Frankl (2017), and recently by Li and Wu (2024). In this paper, we establish the following upper bound: if $ \mathcal{A}_1, \mathcal{A}_2, \ldots, \mathcal{A}_m \subseteq 2^{[n]}$ are non-empty pairwise cross $t$-intersecting families, then $$ \sum_{i=1}^m |\mathcal{A}_i| \leq \max \left\{ \sum_{k=t} ^{n}\binom{n}{k} + m - 1, \, m M(n, t) \right\}. $$ Furthermore, we provide a complete characterization of the extremal families that achieve the bound. Our result not only generalizes an old result of Katona (1964) for a single family, but also extends a theorem of Frankl and Wong (2021) for two families. Moreover, our result could be viewed as a non-uniform version of a recent theorem of Li and Zhang (2025). The key in our proof is to utilize the generating set method and the pushing-pulling method together.