arXiv subjects

Asaf Shapira

Publications and source records attributed to Asaf Shapira.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2017

A Generalized Turán Problem and its Applications

The investigation of conditions guaranteeing the appearance of cycles of certain lengths is one of the most well-studied topics in graph theory. In this paper we consider a problem of this type which asks, for fixed integers ${\ell}$ and $k$, how many copies of the $k$-cycle guarantee the appearance of an $\ell$-cycle? Extending previous results of Bollobás--Győri--Li and Alon--Shikhelman, we fully resolve this problem by giving tight (or nearly tight) bounds for all values of $\ell$ and $k$. We also present a somewhat surprising application of the above mentioned estimates to the study of the graph removal lemma. Prior to this work, all bounds for removal lemmas were either polynomial or there was a tower-type gap between the best known upper and lower bounds. We fill this gap by showing that for every super-polynomial function $f(\varepsilon)$, there is a family of graphs ${\cal F}$, such that the bounds for the ${\cal F}$ removal lemma are precisely given by $f(\varepsilon)$. We thus obtain the first examples of removal lemmas with tight super-polynomial bounds. A special case of this result resolves a problem of Alon and the second author, while another special case partially resolves a problem of Goldreich.

math.CO↗

arXiv2017

The Removal Lemma for Tournaments

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 tournaments $H$ for which $f^*_H(ε)$ is polynomial in $ε$, stating that such a bound is attainable if and only if $H$'s vertex set can be partitioned into two sets, each spanning an acyclic directed graph. The proof of this characterization relies, among other things, on a novel application of a regularity lemma for matrices due to Alon, Fischer and Newman, and on probabilistic variants of Ruzsa-Szemerédi graphs. We finally show that even when restricted to tournaments, deciding if $H$ satisfies the condition of our characterization is an NP-hard problem.

math.CO↗

arXiv2017

Efficient Removal without Efficient Regularity

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 obtaining an efficient removal lemma for property ${\cal P}$ was having an efficient regularity lemma for graphs satisfying ${\cal P}$. In this paper we consider the property of being induced $C_4$-free, which also suffers from the fact that a graph might satisfy this property but still have only regular partitions of tower-type size. By developing a new approach for this problem we manage to overcome this barrier and thus obtain a merely exponential bound for the induced $C_4$ removal lemma. We thus obtain the first efficient removal lemma that does not rely on an efficient version of the regularity lemma. This is the first substantial progress on a problem raised by Alon in 2001, and more recently by Alon, Conlon and Fox.

math.CO↗

arXiv2016

Removal Lemmas with Polynomial Bounds

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 other graph properties, and for some of them the corresponding function $C(\varepsilon)$ is polynomial. This raised the natural question, posed by Goldreich in 2005 and more recently by Alon and Fox, of characterizing the properties for which one can prove removal lemmas with polynomial bounds. Our main results in this paper are new sufficient and necessary criteria for guaranteeing that a graph property admits a removal lemma with a polynomial bound. Although both are simple combinatorial criteria, they imply almost all prior positive and negative results of this type. Moreover, our new sufficient conditions allow us to obtain polynomially bounded removal lemmas for many properties for which the previously known bounds were of tower-type. In particular, we show that every {\em semi-algebraic} graph property admits a polynomially bounded removal lemma. This confirms a conjecture of Alon.

math.CO↗

arXiv2016

A Sparse Regular Approximation Lemma

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 raises the following question: can one obtain quantitative bounds for SRAL that are significantly better than those associated with the regularity lemma? Our first result answers the above question affirmatively by proving an upper bound for SRAL given by a tower of height $O(\log 1/p)$. This allows us to reprove Fox's upper bound for the graph removal lemma. Our second result is a matching lower bound for SRAL showing that a tower of height $Ω(\log 1/p)$ is unavoidable. We in fact prove a more general multicolored lower bound which is essential for proving lower bounds for the hypergraph regularity lemma.

math.CO↗

arXiv2015

A tournament approach to pattern avoiding matrices

We consider the following Turán-type problem: given a fixed tournament $H$, what is the least integer $t=t(n,H)$ so that adding $t$ edges to any $n$-vertex tournament, results in a digraph containing a copy of $H$. Similarly, what is the least integer $t=t(T_n,H)$ so that adding $t$ edges to the $n$-vertex transitive tournament, results in a digraph containing a copy of $H$. Besides proving several results on these problems, our main contributions are the following: (1) Pach and Tardos conjectured that if $M$ is an acyclic $0/1$ matrix, then any $n \times n$ matrix with $n(\log n)^{O(1)}$ entries equal to $1$ contains the pattern $M$. We show that this conjecture is equivalent to the assertion that $t(T_n,H)=n(\log n)^{O(1)}$ if and only if $H$ belongs to a certain (natural) family of tournaments. (2) We propose an approach for determining if $t(n,H)=n(\log n)^{O(1)}$. This approach combines expansion in sparse graphs, together with certain structural characterizations of $H$-free tournaments. Our result opens the door for using structural graph theoretic tools in order to settle the Pach-Tardos conjecture.

math.CO↗

arXiv2015

Constructing Near Spanning Trees with Few Local Inspections

Constructing a spanning tree of a graph is one of the most basic tasks in graph theory. Motivated by several recent studies of local graph algorithms, we consider the following variant of this problem. Let G be a connected bounded-degree graph. Given an edge $e$ in $G$ we would like to decide whether $e$ belongs to a connected subgraph $G'$ consisting of $(1+ε)n$ edges (for a prespecified constant $ε>0$), where the decision for different edges should be consistent with the same subgraph $G'$. Can this task be performed by inspecting only a {\em constant} number of edges in $G$? Our main results are: (1) We show that if every $t$-vertex subgraph of $G$ has expansion $1/(\log t)^{1+o(1)}$ then one can (deterministically) construct a sparse spanning subgraph $G'$ of $G$ using few inspections. To this end we analyze a "local" version of a famous minimum-weight spanning tree algorithm. (2) We show that the above expansion requirement is sharp even when allowing randomization. To this end we construct a family of $3$-regular graphs of high girth, in which every $t$-vertex subgraph has expansion $1/(\log t)^{1-o(1)}$.

math.CO↗

arXiv2015

Decomposing a Graph Into Expanding Subgraphs

A paradigm that was successfully applied in the study of both pure and algorithmic problems in graph theory can be colloquially summarized as stating that "any graph is close to being the disjoint union of expanders". Our goal in this paper is to show that in several of the instantiations of the above approach, the quantitative bounds that were obtained are essentially best possible. These results are obtained as corollaries of a new family of graphs, which we construct by picking random subgraphs of the hypercube, and analyze using (simple) arguments from the theory of metric embedding.

math.CO↗

arXiv2014

An Improved Lower Bound for Arithmetic Regularity

The arithmetic regularity lemma due to Green [GAFA 2005] is an analogue of the famous Szemer{é}di regularity lemma in graph theory. It shows that for any abelian group $G$ and any bounded function $f:G \to [0,1]$, there exists a subgroup $H \le G$ of bounded index such that, when restricted to most cosets of $H$, the function $f$ is pseudorandom in the sense that all its nontrivial Fourier coefficients are small. Quantitatively, if one wishes to obtain that for $1-ε$ fraction of the cosets, the nontrivial Fourier coefficients are bounded by $ε$, then Green shows that $|G/H|$ is bounded by a tower of twos of height $1/ε^3$. He also gives an example showing that a tower of height $Ω(\log 1/ε)$ is necessary. Here, we give an improved example, showing that a tower of height $Ω(1/ε)$ is necessary.

math.CO↗

arXiv2014

Exact Bounds for Some Hypergraph Saturation Problems

Let W_n(p,q) denote the minimum number of edges in an n x n bipartite graph G on vertex sets X,Y that satisfies the following condition; one can add the edges between X and Y that do not belong to G one after the other so that whenever a new edge is added, a new copy of K_{p,q} is created. The problem of bounding W_n(p,q), and its natural hypergraph generalization, was introduced by Balogh, Bollobás, Morris and Riordan. Their main result, specialized to graphs, used algebraic methods to determine W_n(1,q). Our main results in this paper give exact bounds for W_n(p,q), its hypergraph analogue, as well as for a new variant of Bollobás's Two Families theorem. In particular, we completely determine W_n(p,q), showing that if 1 <= p <= q <= n then W_n(p,q) = n^2 - (n-p+1)^2 + (q-p)^2. Our proof applies a reduction to a multi-partite version of the Two Families theorem obtained by Alon. While the reduction is combinatorial, the main idea behind it is algebraic.

math.CO↗

arXiv2013

Forcing $k$-repetitions in degree sequences

One of the most basic results in graph theory states that every graph with at least two vertices has two vertices with the same degree. Since there are graphs without $3$ vertices of the same degree, it is natural to ask if for any fixed $k$, every graph $G$ is ``close'' to a graph $G'$ with $k$ vertices of the same degree. Our main result in this paper is that this is indeed the case. Specifically, we show that for any positive integer $k$, there is a constant $C=C(k)$, so that given any graph $G$, one can remove from $G$ at most $C$ vertices and thus obtain a new graph $G'$ that contains at least $\min\{k,|G|-C\}$ vertices of the same degree. Our main tool is a multidimensional zero-sum theorem for integer sequences, which we prove using an old geometric approach of Alon and Berman.

math.CO↗

arXiv2013

A Short Proof of Gowers' Lower Bound for the Regularity Lemma

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.

math.CO↗

arXiv2013

Small Complete Minors Above the Extremal Edge Density

A fundamental result of Mader from 1972 asserts that a graph of high average degree contains a highly connected subgraph with roughly the same average degree. We prove a lemma showing that one can strengthen Mader's result by replacing the notion of high connectivity by the notion of vertex expansion. Another well known result in graph theory states that for every integer t there is a smallest real c(t) so that every n-vertex graph with c(t)n edges contains a K_t-minor. Fiorini, Joret, Theis and Wood conjectured that if an n-vertex graph G has (c(t)+ε)n edges then G contains a K_t-minor of order at most C(ε)log n. We use our extension of Mader's theorem to prove that such a graph G must contain a K_t-minor of order at most C(ε)log n loglog n. Known constructions of graphs with high girth show that this result is tight up to the loglog n factor.

math.CO↗

arXiv2013

Deterministic vs Non-deterministic Graph Property Testing

A graph property P is said to be testable if one can check if a graph is close or far from satisfying P using few random local inspections. Property P is said to be non-deterministically testable if one can supply a "certificate" to the fact that a graph satisfies P so that once the certificate is given its correctness can be tested. The notion of non-deterministic testing of graph properties was recently introduced by Lovasz and Vesztergombi, who proved that (somewhat surprisingly) a graph property is testable if and only if it is non-deterministically testable. Their proof used graph limits, and so it did not supply any explicit bounds. They thus asked if one can obtain a proof of their result which will supply such bounds. We answer their question positively by proving their result using Szemeredi's regularity lemma. An interesting aspect of our proof is that it highlights the fact that the regularity lemma can be interpreted as saying that all graphs can be approximated by finitely many "template" graphs.

math.CO↗

arXiv2012

Ramsey Theory, Integer Partitions and a New Proof of the Erdos-Szekeres Theorem

Let H be a k-uniform hypergraph whose vertices are the integers 1,...,N. We say that H contains a monotone path of length n if there are x_1 < x_2 < ... < x_{n+k-1} so that H contains all n edges of the form {x_i,x_{i+1},...,x_{i+k-1}}. Let N_k(q,n) be the smallest integer N so that every q-coloring of the edges of the complete k-uniform hypergraph on N vertices contains a monochromatic monotone path of length n. While the study of N_k(q,n) for specific values of k and q goes back (implicitly) to the seminal 1935 paper of Erdos and Szekeres, the problem of bounding N_k(q,n) for arbitrary k and q was studied by Fox, Pach, Sudakov and Suk. Our main contribution here is a novel approach for bounding the Ramsey-type numbers N_k(q,n), based on establishing a surprisingly tight connection between them and the enumerative problem of counting high-dimensional integer partitions. Some of the concrete results we obtain using this approach are the following: 1. We show that for every fixed q we have N_3(q,n)=2^{Θ(n^{q-1})}, thus resolving an open problem raised by Fox et al. 2. We show that for every k >= 3, N_k(2,n)=2^{\cdot^{\cdot^{2^{(2-o(1))n}}}} where the height of the tower is k-2, thus resolving an open problem raised by Elias and Matousek. 3. We give a new pigeonhole proof of the Erdős-Szekeres Theorem on cups-vs-caps, similar to Seidenberg's proof of the Erdos-Szekeres Lemma on increasing/decreasing subsequences.

math.CO↗

arXiv2012

A Note on Even Cycles and Quasi-Random Tournaments

A cycle C={v_1,v_2,....,v_1} in a tournament T is said to be even, if when walking along C, an even number of edges point in the wrong direction, that is, they are directed from v_{i+1} to v_i. In this short paper, we show that for every fixed even integer k >= 4, if close to half of the k-cycles in a tournament T are even, then T must be quasi-random. This resolves an open question raised in 1991 by Chung and Graham

math.CO↗

arXiv2012

A Wowzer Type Lower Bound for the Strong Regularity Lemma

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 show here that a bound of this type is unavoidable by constructing a graph H, with the property that even if one wants a very mild control on the quasi-randomness of a regular partition, then any such partition of H must have a number of parts given by a Wowzer-type function.

math.CO↗

arXiv2012

Finding Cycles and Trees in Sublinear Time

We present sublinear-time (randomized) algorithms for finding simple cycles of length at least $k\geq 3$ and tree-minors in bounded-degree graphs. The complexity of these algorithms is related to the distance of the graph from being $C_k$-minor-free (resp., free from having the corresponding tree-minor). In particular, if the graph is far (i.e., $Ω(1)$-far) {from} being cycle-free, i.e. if one has to delete a constant fraction of edges to make it cycle-free, then the algorithm finds a cycle of polylogarithmic length in time $\tildeO(\sqrt{N})$, where $N$ denotes the number of vertices. This time complexity is optimal up to polylogarithmic factors. The foregoing results are the outcome of our study of the complexity of {\em one-sided error} property testing algorithms in the bounded-degree graphs model. For example, we show that cycle-freeness of $N$-vertex graphs can be tested with one-sided error within time complexity $\tildeO(\poly(1/\e)\cdot\sqrt{N})$. This matches the known $Ω(\sqrt{N})$ query lower bound, and contrasts with the fact that any minor-free property admits a {\em two-sided error} tester of query complexity that only depends on the proximity parameter $\e$. For any constant $k\geq3$, we extend this result to testing whether the input graph has a simple cycle of length at least $k$. On the other hand, for any fixed tree $T$, we show that $T$-minor-freeness has a one-sided error tester of query complexity that only depends on the proximity parameter $\e$. Our algorithm for finding cycles in bounded-degree graphs extends to general graphs, where distances are measured with respect to the actual number of edges. Such an extension is not possible with respect to finding tree-minors in $o(\sqrt{N})$ complexity.

cs.DS↗