arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Anurag Bishnoi.
A construction of Alon and Krivelevich gives highly pseudorandom $K_k$-free graphs on $n$ vertices with edge density equal to $Θ(n^{-1/(k -2)})$. In this short note we improve their result by constructing an infinite family of highly pseudorandom $K_k$-free graphs with a higher edge density of $Θ(n^{-1/(k - 1)})$.
A famous conjecture of Ryser states that every $r$-partite hypergraph has vertex cover number at most $r - 1$ times the matching number. In recent years, hypergraphs meeting this conjectured bound, known as $r$-Ryser hypergraphs, have been studied extensively. It was recently proved by Haxell, Narins and Szabó that all $3$-Ryser hypergraphs with matching number $ν> 1$ are essentially obtained by taking $ν$ disjoint copies of intersecting $3$-Ryser hypergraphs. Abu-Khazneh showed that such a characterisation is false for $r = 4$ by giving a computer generated example of a $4$-Ryser hypergraph with $ν= 2$ whose vertex set cannot be partitioned into two sets such that we have an intersecting $4$-Ryser hypergraph on each of these parts. Here we construct new infinite families of $r$-Ryser hypergraphs, for any given matching number $ν> 1$, that do not contain two vertex disjoint intersecting $r$-Ryser subhypergraphs.
We prove that a minimal $t$-fold blocking set in a finite projective plane of order $n$ has cardinality at most \[\frac{1}{2} n\sqrt{4tn - (3t + 1)(t - 1)} + \frac{1}{2} (t - 1)n + t.\] This is the first general upper bound on the size of minimal $t$-fold blocking sets in finite projective planes and it generalizes the classical result of Bruen and Thas on minimal blocking sets. From the proof it directly follows that if equality occurs in this bound then every line intersects the blocking set $S$ in either $t$ points or $\frac{1}{2}(\sqrt{4tn - (3t + 1)(t - 1)} + t - 1) + 1$ points. We use this to show that for $n$ a prime power, equality can occur in our bound in exactly one of the following three cases: (a) $t = 1$, $n$ is a square and $S$ is a unital; (b) $t = n - \sqrt{n}$, $n$ is a square and $S$ is the complement of a Baer subplane; (c) $t = n$ and $S$ is equal to the set of all points except one. For a square prime power $q$ and $t \leq \sqrt{q} + 1$, we give a construction of a minimal $t$-fold blocking set $S$ in $\mathrm{PG}(2,q)$ with $|S| = q\sqrt{q} + 1 + (t - 1)(q - \sqrt{q} + 1)$. Furthermore, we obtain an upper bound on the size of minimal blocking sets in symmetric $2$-designs and use it to give new proofs of other known results regarding tangency sets in higher dimensional finite projective spaces. We also discuss further generalizations of our bound. In our proofs we use an incidence bound on combinatorial designs which follows from applying the expander mixing lemma to the incidence graph of these designs.
The cage problem asks for the smallest number $c(k,g)$ of vertices in a $k$-regular graph of girth $g$ and graphs meeting this bound are known as cages. While cages are known to exist for all integers $k \ge 2$ and $g \ge 3$, the exact value of $c(k, g)$ is known only for some small values of $k, g$ and three infinite families where $g \in \{6, 8, 12\}$ and $k - 1$ is a prime power. These infinite families come from the incidence graphs of generalized polygons. Some of the best known upper bounds on $c(k,g)$ for $g \in \{6, 8, 12\}$ have been obtained by constructing small regular induced subgraphs of these cages. In this paper, we first use the Expander Mixing Lemma to give a general lower bound on the size of an induced $k$-regular subgraph of a regular bipartite graph in terms of the second largest eigenvalue of the host graph. We use this bound to show that the known construction of $(k,6)$-graphs using Baer subplanes of the Desarguesian projective plane is the best possible. For generalized quadrangles and hexagons, our bounds are new. In particular, we improve the known lower bound on the size of a $q$-regular induced subgraphs of the classical generalized quadrangle $\mathsf{Q}(4,q)$ and show that the known constructions are asymptotically sharp. For prime powers $q$, we also improve the known upper bounds on $c(q,8)$ and $c(q,12)$ by giving new geometric constructions of $q$-regular induced subgraphs in the symplectic generalized quadrangle $\mathsf{W}(3,q)$ and the split Cayley hexagon $\mathsf{H}(q)$, respectively. Our constructions show that \[c(q,8) \le 2(q^3 - q\sqrt{q} - q)\] for $q$ an even power of a prime, and \[c(q, 12) \le 2(q^5 - 3q^3)\] for all prime powers $q$. For $q \in \{3,4,5\}$ we also give a computer classification of all $q$-regular induced subgraphs of the classical generalized quadrangles of order $q$.
We give conditions under which the number of solutions of a system of polynomial equations over a finite field F_q of characteristic p is divisible by p. Our setup involves the substitution t_i |-> f_i(t_i) for auxiliary polynomials f_1,...,f_n in F_q[t]. We recover as special cases results of Chevalley-Warning and Morlaye-Joly. Then we investigate higher p-adic divisibilities, proving a result that recovers the Ax-Katz Theorem. We also consider p-weight degrees, recovering work of Moreno-Moreno, Moreno-Castro and Castro-Castro-Velez.
The research in this paper was motivated by one of the most important open problems in the theory of generalized polygons, namely the existence problem for semi-finite thick generalized polygons. We show here that no semi-finite generalized hexagon of order $(2,t)$ can have a subhexagon $H$ of order $2$. Such a subhexagon is necessarily isomorphic to the split Cayley generalized hexagon $H(2)$ or its point-line dual $H^D(2)$. In fact, the employed techniques allow us to prove a stronger result. We show that every near hexagon $\mathcal{S}$ of order $(2,t)$ which contains a generalized hexagon $H$ of order $2$ as an isometrically embedded subgeometry must be finite. Moreover, if $H \cong H^D(2)$ then $\mathcal{S}$ must also be a generalized hexagon, and consequently isomorphic to either $H^D(2)$ or the dual twisted triality hexagon $T(2,8)$.
A 1993 result of Alon and Füredi gives a sharp upper bound on the number of zeros of a multivariate polynomial over an integral domain in a finite grid, in terms of the degree of the polynomial. This result was recently generalized to polynomials over an arbitrary commutative ring, assuming a certain "Condition (D)" on the grid which holds vacuously when the ring is a domain. In the first half of this paper we give a further Generalized Alon-Füredi Theorem which provides a sharp upper bound when the degrees of the polynomial in each variable are also taken into account. This yields in particular a new proof of Alon-Füredi. We then discuss the relationship between Alon-Füredi and results of DeMillo-Lipton, Schwartz and Zippel. A direct coding theoretic interpretation of Alon-Füredi Theorem and its generalization in terms of Reed--Muller type affine variety codes is shown which gives us the minimum Hamming distance of these codes. Then we apply the Alon-Füredi Theorem to quickly recover (and sometimes strengthen) old and new results in finite geometry, including the Jamison/Brouwer-Schrijver bound on affine blocking sets. We end with a discussion of multiplicity enhancements.
We prove that there are no semi-finite generalized hexagons with $q + 1$ points on each line containing the known generalized hexagons of order $q$ as full subgeometries when $q$ is equal to $3$ or $4$, thus contributing to the existence problem of semi-finite generalized polygons posed by Tits. The case when $q$ is equal to $2$ was treated by us in an earlier work, for which we give an alternate proof. For the split Cayley hexagon of order $4$ we obtain the stronger result that it cannot be contained as a proper full subgeometry in any generalized hexagon.
In recent work we constructed two new near octagons, one related to the finite simple group $\mathrm{G}_2(4)$ and another one as a sub-near-octagon of the former. In the present paper, we give a direct construction of this sub-near-octagon using a split extension of the group $\mathrm{L}_3(4)$. We derive several geometric properties of this $\mathrm{L}_3(4)$ near octagon, and determine its full automorphism group. We also prove that the $\mathrm{L}_3(4)$ near octagon is closely related to the second subconstituent of the distance-regular graph on 486 vertices discovered by Soicher in 1993.
We construct and study a new near octagon of order $(2,10)$ which has its full automorphism group isomorphic to the group $\mathrm{G}_2(4){:}2$ and which contains $416$ copies of the Hall-Janko near octagon as full subgeometries. Using this near octagon and its substructures we give geometric constructions of the $\mathrm{G}_2(4)$-graph and the Suzuki graph, both of which are strongly regular graphs contained in the Suzuki tower. As a subgeometry of this octagon we have discovered another new near octagon, whose order is $(2,4)$.
We give a computer-based proof for the non-existence of distance-$2$ ovoids in the dual split Cayley hexagon $\mathsf{H}(4)^D$. Furthermore, we give upper bounds on partial distance-$2$ ovoids of $\mathsf{H}(q)^D$ for $q \in \{2, 4\}$.
In recent work, we constructed a new near octagon $\mathcal{G}$ from certain involutions of the finite simple group $G_2(4)$ and showed a correspondence between the Suzuki tower of finite simple groups, $L_3(2) < U_3(3) < J_2 < G_2(4) < Suz$, and the tower of near polygons, $\mathrm{H}(2,1) \subset \mathrm{H}(2)^D \subset \mathsf{HJ} \subset \mathcal{G}$. Here we characterize each of these near polygons (except for the first one) as the unique near polygon of the given order and diameter containing an isometrically embedded copy of the previous near polygon of the tower. In particular, our characterization of the Hall-Janko near octagon $\mathsf{HJ}$ is similar to an earlier characterization due to Cohen and Tits who proved that it is the unique regular near octagon with parameters $(2, 4; 0, 3)$, but instead of regularity we assume existence of an isometrically embedded dual split Cayley hexagon, $\mathrm{H}(2)^D$. We also give a complete classification of near hexagons of order $(2, 2)$ and use it to prove the uniqueness result for $\mathrm{H}(2)^D$.