arXiv subjects

Barnabás Janzer

Publications and source records attributed to Barnabás Janzer.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Sunflowers and Ramsey problems for restricted intersections

Extremal problems on set systems with restricted intersections have been an important part of combinatorics in the last 70 years. In this paper, we study the following Ramsey version of these problems. Given a set $L\subseteq \{0,\dots,k-1\}$ and a family $\mathcal{F}$ of $k$-element sets which does not contain a sunflower with $m$ petals whose kernel size is in $L$, how large a subfamily of $\mathcal{F}$ can we find in which no pair has intersection size in $L$? We give matching upper and lower bounds, determining the dependence on $m$ for all $k$ and $L$. This problem also finds applications in quantum computing. As an application of our techniques, we also obtain a variant of Füredi's celebrated semilattice lemma, which is a key tool in the powerful delta-system method. We prove that one cannot remove the double-exponential dependency on the uniformity in Füredi's result, however, we provide an alternative with significantly better, single-exponential dependency on the parameters, which is still strong enough for most applications of the delta-system method.

math.CO↗

arXiv2026

Packing the largest trees in the tree packing conjecture

The famous tree packing conjecture of Gyárfás from 1976 says that any sequence of trees $T_1,\ldots,T_n$ such that $|T_i|=i$ for each $i\in [n]$ packs into the complete $n$-vertex graph $K_n$. Packing even just the largest trees in such a sequence has proven difficult, with Bollobás drawing attention to this in 1995 by conjecturing that, for each $k$, if $n$ is sufficiently large then the largest $k$ trees in any such sequence can be packed into $K_n$. This has only been shown for $k\leq 5$, by Żak, despite many partial results and much related work on the full tree packing conjecture. We prove Bollobás's conjecture, by showing that, moreover, a linear number of the largest trees can be packed in the tree packing conjecture.

math.CO↗

arXiv2025

Extending Thomassen's conjecture to directed graphs

A famous conjecture by Thomassen from 1983 asserts that for any given $k,g\in \mathbb{N}$ there exists some $d=d(k,g)\in \mathbb{N}$ such that every graph of minimum degree at least $d$ contains a subgraph of minimum degree at least $k$ and girth at least $g$. In this paper, we initiate the systematic study of the directed analogs of Thomassen's conjecture one obtains when replacing minimum degree by minimum out-degree. Concretely, we study which digraphs $F$ are avoidable in the sense that there exists $d_F:\mathbb{N}\rightarrow \mathbb{N}$ such that every digraph of minimum out-degree at least $d_F(k)$ contains an $F$-free subdigraph of minimum out-degree at least $k$. Among our main results, we show that all orientations of $C_3$ and $C_5$ are avoidable, while one-directed orientations of complete bipartite graphs and all oriented trees are not avoidable. This, in particular, shows that the most direct extension of Thomassen's conjecture to digraphs is false. We also fully characterize which digraphs are avoidable when restricting the setting to regular host digraphs. Finally, we raise numerous attractive open problems in the hope of sparking further progress.

math.CO↗

arXiv2024

Tight bounds for intersection-reverse sequences, edge-ordered graphs and applications

In 2006, Marcus and Tardos proved that if $A^1,\dots,A^n$ are cyclic orders on some subsets of a set of $n$ symbols such that the common elements of any two distinct orders $A^i$ and $A^j$ appear in reversed cyclic order in $A^i$ and $A^j$, then $\sum_{i} |A^i|=O(n^{3/2}\log n)$. This result is tight up to the logarithmic factor and has since become an important tool in Discrete Geometry. We improve this to the optimal bound $O(n^{3/2})$. In fact, we show that if $A^1,\dots,A^n$ are linear orders on some subsets of a set of $n$ symbols such that no three symbols appear in the same order in any two distinct linear orders, then $\sum_{i} |A^i|=O(n^{3/2})$. Using this result, we resolve several open problems in Discrete Geometry and Extremal Graph Theory as follows. We prove that every $n$-vertex topological graph that does not contain a self-crossing four-cycle has $O(n^{3/2})$ edges. This resolves a problem of Marcus and Tardos from 2006. We also show that $n$ pseudo-circles in the plane can be cut into $O(n^{3/2})$ pseudo-segments, which, in turn, implies new bounds on point-circle incidences and on other geometric problems. Moreover, we prove that the edge-ordered Turán number of the four-cycle $C_4^{1243}$ is $Θ(n^{3/2})$. This answers a question of Gerbner, Methuku, Nagy, Pálvölgyi, Tardos and Vizer. Using different methods, we determine the largest possible extremal number that an edge-ordered forest of order chromatic number two can have. Kucheriya and Tardos showed that every such graph has extremal number at most $n2^{O(\sqrt{\log n})}$, and conjectured that this can be improved to $n(\log n)^{O(1)}$. We disprove their conjecture by showing that for every $C>0$, there exists an edge-ordered tree of order chromatic number two whose extremal number is $Ω(n 2^{C\sqrt{\log n}})$.

math.CO↗

arXiv2024

Chromatic number and regular subgraphs

In 1992, Erdős and Hajnal posed the following natural problem: Does there exist, for every $r\in \mathbb{N}$, an integer $F(r)$ such that every graph with chromatic number at least $F(r)$ contains $r$ edge-disjoint cycles on the same vertex set? We solve this problem in a strong form, by showing that there exist $n$-vertex graphs with fractional chromatic number $Ω\left(\frac{\log \log n}{\log \log \log n}\right)$ that do not even contain a $4$-regular subgraph. This implies that no such number $F(r)$ exists for $r\ge 2$. We show that assuming a conjecture of Harris, the bound on the fractional chromatic number in our result cannot be improved.

math.CO↗

arXiv2024

Tight general bounds for the extremal numbers of 0-1 matrices

A zero-one matrix $M$ is said to contain another zero-one matrix $A$ if we can delete some rows and columns of $M$ and replace some $1$-entries with $0$-entries such that the resulting matrix is $A$. The extremal number of $A$, denoted $\operatorname{ex}(n,A)$, is the maximum number of $1$-entries that an $n\times n$ zero-one matrix can have without containing $A$. The systematic study of this function for various patterns $A$ goes back to the work of Füredi and Hajnal from 1992, and the field has many connections to other areas of mathematics and theoretical computer science. The problem has been particularly extensively studied for so-called acyclic matrices, but very little is known about the general case (that is, the case where $A$ is not necessarily acyclic). We prove the first asymptotically tight general result by showing that if $A$ has at most $t$ $1$-entries in every row, then $\operatorname{ex}(n,A)\leq n^{2-1/t+o(1)}$. This verifies a conjecture of Methuku and Tomon. Our result also provides the first tight general bound for the extremal number of vertex-ordered graphs with interval chromatic number $2$, generalizing a celebrated result of Füredi, and Alon, Krivelevich and Sudakov about the (unordered) extremal number of bipartite graphs with maximum degree $t$ in one of the vertex classes.

math.CO↗

arXiv2024

Ordered Ramsey numbers of powers of paths

Given two vertex-ordered graphs $G$ and $H$, the ordered Ramsey number $R_<(G,H)$ is the smallest $N$ such that whenever the edges of a vertex-ordered complete graph $K_N$ are red/blue-coloured, then there is a red (ordered) copy of $G$ or a blue (ordered) copy of $H$. Let $P_n^t$ denote the $t$-th power of a monotone path on $n$ vertices. The ordered Ramsey numbers of powers of paths have been extensively studied. We prove that there exists an absolute constant $C$ such that $R_<(K_s,P_n^t)\leq R(K_s,K_t)^{C} \cdot n$ holds for all $s,t,n$, which is tight up to the value of $C$. As a corollary, we obtain that there is an absolute constant $C$ such that $R_<(K_n,P_n^t)\leq n^{Ct}$. These results resolve a problem and a conjecture of Gishboliner, Jin and Sudakov. Furthermore, we show that $R_<(P_n^t,P_n^t)\leq n^{4+o(1)}$ for any fixed $t$. This answers questions of Balko, Cibulka, Král and Kynčl, and of Gishboliner, Jin and Sudakov.

math.CO↗

arXiv2023

A collection of open problems in celebration of Imre Leader's 60th birthday

One of the great pleasures of working with Imre Leader is to experience his infectious delight on encountering a compelling combinatorial problem. This collection of open problems in combinatorics has been put together by a subset of his former PhD students and students-of-students for the occasion of his 60th birthday. All of the contributors have been influenced (directly or indirectly) by Imre: his personality, enthusiasm and his approach to mathematics. The problems included cover many of the areas of combinatorial mathematics that Imre is most associated with: including extremal problems on graphs, set systems and permutations, and Ramsey theory. This is a personal selection of problems which we find intriguing and deserving of being better known. It is not intended to be systematic, or to consist of the most significant or difficult questions in any area. Rather, our main aim is to celebrate Imre and his mathematics and to hope that these problems will make him smile. We also hope this collection will be a useful resource for researchers in combinatorics and will stimulate some enjoyable collaborations and beautiful mathematics.

math.CO↗

arXiv2023

On locally rainbow colourings

Given a graph $H$, let $g(n,H)$ denote the smallest $k$ for which the following holds. We can assign a $k$-colouring $f_v$ of the edge set of $K_n$ to each vertex $v$ in $K_n$ with the property that for any copy $T$ of $H$ in $K_n$, there is some $u\in V(T)$ such that every edge in $T$ has a different colour in $f_u$. The study of this function was initiated by Alon and Ben-Eliezer. They characterized the family of graphs $H$ for which $g(n,H)$ is bounded and asked whether it is true that for every other graph $g(n,H)$ is polynomial. We show that this is not the case and characterize the family of connected graphs $H$ for which $g(n,H)$ grows polynomially. Answering another question of theirs, we also prove that for every $\varepsilon>0$, there is some $r=r(\varepsilon)$ such that $g(n,K_r)\geq n^{1-\varepsilon}$ for all sufficiently large $n$. Finally, we show that the above problem is connected to the Erdős-Gyárfás function in Ramsey Theory, and prove a family of special cases of a conjecture of Conlon, Fox, Lee and Sudakov by showing that for each fixed $r$ the complete $r$-uniform hypergraph $K_n^{(r)}$ can be edge-coloured using a subpolynomial number of colours in such a way that at least $r$ colours appear among any $r+1$ vertices.

math.CO↗

arXiv2022

Rotation inside convex Kakeya sets

Let $K$ be a convex body (a compact convex set) in $\mathbb{R}^d$, that contains a copy of another body $S$ in every possible orientation. Is it always possible to continuously move any one copy of $S$ into another, inside $K$? As a stronger question, is it always possible to continuously select, for each orientation, one copy of $S$ in that orientation? These questions were asked by Croft. We show that, in two dimensions, the stronger question always has an affirmative answer. We also show that in three dimensions the answer is negative, even for the case when $S$ is a line segment -- but that in any dimension the first question has a positive answer when $S$ is a line segment. And we prove that, surprisingly, the answer to the first question is negative in dimension four for general $S$.

math.MG↗

arXiv2022

Long running times for hypergraph bootstrap percolation

Consider the hypergraph bootstrap percolation process in which, given a fixed $r$-uniform hypergraph $H$ and starting with a given hypergraph $G_0$, at each step we add to $G_0$ all edges that create a new copy of $H$. We are interested in maximising the number of steps that this process takes before it stabilises. For the case where $H=K_{r+1}^{(r)}$ with $r\geq3$, we provide a new construction for $G_0$ that shows that the number of steps of this process can be of order $Θ(n^r)$. This answers a recent question of Noel and Ranganathan. To demonstrate that different running times can occur, we also prove that, if $H$ is $K_4^{(3)}$ minus an edge, then the maximum possible running time is $2n-\lfloor \log_2(n-2)\rfloor-6$. However, if $H$ is $K_5^{(3)}$ minus an edge, then the process can run for $Θ(n^3)$ steps.

math.CO↗

arXiv2022

Partial shuffles by lazy swaps

What is the smallest number of random transpositions (meaning that we swap given pairs of elements with given probabilities) that we can make on an $n$-point set to ensure that each element is uniformly distributed -- in the sense that the probability that $i$ is mapped to $j$ is $1/n$ for all $i$ and $j$? And what if we insist that each pair is uniformly distributed? In this paper we show that the minimum for the first problem is about $\frac{1}{2} n \log_2 n$, with this being exact when $n$ is a power of $2$. For the second problem, we show that, rather surprisingly, the answer is not quadratic: $O(n \log^2 n)$ random transpositions suffice. We also show that if we ask only that the pair $1,2$ is uniformly distributed then the answer is $2n-3$. This proves a conjecture of Groenland, Johnston, Radcliffe and Scott.

math.CO↗

arXiv2021

A note on saturation for $k$-wise intersecting families

A family $\mathcal{F}$ of subsets of $\{1,\dots,n\}$ is called $k$-wise intersecting if any $k$ members of $\mathcal{F}$ have non-empty intersection, and it is called maximal $k$-wise intersecting if no family strictly containing $\mathcal{F}$ satisfies this condition. We show that for each $k\geq 2$ there is a maximal $k$-wise intersecting family of size $O(2^{n/(k-1)})$. Up to a constant factor, this matches the best known lower bound, and answers an old question of Erdős and Kleitman, recently studied by Hendrey, Lund, Tompkins, and Tran.

math.CO↗

arXiv2021

On Query-efficient Planning in MDPs under Linear Realizability of the Optimal State-value Function

We consider local planning in fixed-horizon MDPs with a generative model under the assumption that the optimal value function lies close to the span of a feature map. The generative model provides a local access to the MDP: The planner can ask for random transitions from previously returned states and arbitrary actions, and features are only accessible for states that are encountered in this process. As opposed to previous work (e.g. Lattimore et al. (2020)) where linear realizability of all policies was assumed, we consider the significantly relaxed assumption of a single linearly realizable (deterministic) policy. A recent lower bound by Weisz et al. (2020) established that the related problem when the action-value function of the optimal policy is linearly realizable requires an exponential number of queries, either in $H$ (the horizon of the MDP) or $d$ (the dimension of the feature mapping). Their construction crucially relies on having an exponentially large action set. In contrast, in this work, we establish that poly$(H,d)$ planning is possible with state value function realizability whenever the action set has a constant size. In particular, we present the TensorPlan algorithm which uses poly$((dH/δ)^A)$ simulator queries to find a $δ$-optimal policy relative to any deterministic policy for which the value function is linearly realizable with some bounded parameter. This is the first algorithm to give a polynomial query complexity guarantee using only linear-realizability of a single competing value function. Whether the computation cost is similarly bounded remains an open question. We extend the upper bound to the near-realizable case and to the infinite-horizon discounted setup. We also present a lower bound in the infinite-horizon episodic setting: Planners that achieve constant suboptimality need exponentially many queries, either in $d$ or the number of actions.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2020

Large hypergraphs without tight cycles

An $r$-uniform tight cycle of length $\ell>r$ is a hypergraph with vertices $v_1,\dots,v_\ell$ and edges $\{v_i,v_{i+1},\dots,v_{i+r-1}\}$ (for all $i$), with the indices taken modulo $\ell$. It was shown by Sudakov and Tomon that for each fixed $r\geq 3$, an $r$-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices which does not contain a tight cycle of any length has at most $n^{r-1+o(1)}$ hyperedges, but the best known construction (with the largest number of edges) only gives $Ω(n^{r-1})$ edges. In this note we prove that, for each fixed $r\geq 3$, there are $r$-uniform hypergraphs with $Ω(n^{r-1}\log n/\log\log n)$ edges which contain no tight cycles, showing that the $o(1)$ term in the exponent of the upper bound is necessary.

math.CO↗

arXiv2020

A note on the orientation covering number

Given a graph $G$, its orientation covering number $σ(G)$ is the smallest non-negative integer $k$ with the property that we can choose $k$ orientations of $G$ such that whenever $x, y, z$ are vertices of $G$ with $xy,xz\in E(G)$ then there is a chosen orientation in which both $xy$ and $xz$ are oriented away from $x$. Esperet, Gimbel and King showed that $σ(G)\leq σ\left(K_{χ(G)}\right)$, where $χ(G)$ is the chromatic number of $G$, and asked whether we always have equality. In this note we prove that it is indeed always the case that $σ(G)=σ(K_{χ(G)})$. We also determine the exact value of $σ(K_n)$ explicitly for `most' values of $n$.

math.CO↗

arXiv2020

The generalised rainbow Turán problem for cycles

Given an edge-coloured graph, we say that a subgraph is rainbow if all of its edges have different colours. Let $\operatorname{ex}(n,H,$rainbow-$F)$ denote the maximal number of copies of $H$ that a properly edge-coloured graph on $n$ vertices can contain if it has no rainbow subgraph isomorphic to $F$. We determine the order of magnitude of $\operatorname{ex}(n,C_s,$rainbow-$C_t)$ for all $s,t$ with $s\not =3$. In particular, we answer a question of Gerbner, Mészáros, Methuku and Palmer by showing that $\operatorname{ex}(n,C_{2k},$rainbow-$C_{2k})$ is $Θ(n^{k-1})$ if $k\geq 3$ and $Θ(n^2)$ if $k=2$. We also determine the order of magnitude of $\operatorname{ex}(n,P_\ell,$rainbow-$C_{2k})$ for all $k,\ell\geq 2$, where $P_\ell$ denotes the path with $\ell$ edges.

math.CO↗

arXiv2020

Generalizations of the Ruzsa-Szemerédi and rainbow Turán problems for cliques

Considering a natural generalization of the Ruzsa-Szemerédi problem, we prove that for any fixed positive integers $r,s$ with $r<s$, there are graphs on $n$ vertices containing $n^{r}e^{-O(\sqrt{\log{n}})}=n^{r-o(1)}$ copies of $K_s$ such that any $K_r$ is contained in at most one $K_s$. We also give bounds for the generalized rainbow Turán problem $\operatorname{ex}(n, H,$rainbow-$F)$ when $F$ is complete. In particular, we answer a question of Gerbner, Mészáros, Methuku and Palmer, showing that there are properly edge-coloured graphs on $n$ vertices with $n^{r-1-o(1)}$ copies of $K_r$ such that no $K_r$ is rainbow.

math.CO↗