arXiv subjects

Benny Sudakov

Publications and source records attributed to Benny Sudakov.

At least 181 records · Page 10Linked to original sources

arXiv2016

Robustness of graph properties

A typical result in graph theory says that a graph $G$, satisfying certain conditions, has some property $\cal P$. Once such a theorem is established, it is natural to ask how strongly $G$ satisfies $\cal P$. Can one strengthen the result by showing that $G$ possesses $\cal P$ in a robust way? What measures of robustness can one utilize? In this survey, we discuss various measures that can be used to study robustness of graph properties, illustrating them with examples.

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arXiv2016

Ramsey goodness of bounded degree trees

Given a pair of graphs $G$ and $H$, the Ramsey number $R(G,H)$ is the smallest $N$ such that every red-blue coloring of the edges of the complete graph $K_N$ contains a red copy of $G$ or a blue copy of $H$. If a graph $G$ is connected, it is well known and easy to show that $R(G,H) \geq (|G|-1)(χ(H)-1)+σ(H)$, where $χ(H)$ is the chromatic number of $H$ and $σ(H)$ is the size of the smallest color class in a $χ(H)$-coloring of $H$. A graph $G$ is called $H$-good if $R(G,H)= (|G|-1)(χ(H)-1)+σ(H)$. The notion of Ramsey goodness was introduced by Burr and Erdős in 1983 and has been extensively studied since then. In this paper we show that if $n\geq Ω(|H| \log^4 |H|)$ then every $n$-vertex bounded degree tree $T$ is $H$-good. The dependency between $n$ and $|H|$ is tight up to $\log$ factors. This substantially improves a result of Erdős, Faudree, Rousseau, and Schelp from 1985, who proved that $n$-vertex bounded degree trees are $H$-good when when $n \geq Ω(|H|^4)$.

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arXiv2016

Bounded colorings of multipartite graphs and hypergraphs

Let $c$ be an edge-coloring of the complete $n$-vertex graph $K_n$. The problem of finding properly colored and rainbow Hamilton cycles in $c$ was initiated in 1976 by Bollobás and Erd\H os and has been extensively studied since then. Recently it was extended to the hypergraph setting by Dudek, Frieze and Ruciński. We generalize these results, giving sufficient local (resp. global) restrictions on the colorings which guarantee a properly colored (resp. rainbow) copy of a given hypergraph $G$. We also study multipartite analogues of these questions. We give (up to a constant factor) optimal sufficient conditions for a coloring $c$ of the complete balanced $m$-partite graph to contain a properly colored or rainbow copy of a given graph $G$ with maximum degree $Δ$. Our bounds exhibit a surprising transition in the rate of growth, showing that the problem is fundamentally different in the regimes $Δ\gg m$ and $Δ\ll m$ Our main tool is the framework of Lu and Székely for the space of random bijections, which we extend to product spaces.

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arXiv2016

Two remarks on even and oddtown problems

A family $\mathcal A$ of subsets of an $n$-element set is called an eventown (resp. oddtown) if all its sets have even (resp. odd) size and all pairwise intersections have even size. Using tools from linear algebra, it was shown by Berlekamp and Graver that the maximum size of an eventown is $2^{\left\lfloor n/2\right\rfloor}$. On the other hand (somewhat surprisingly), it was proven by Berlekamp, that oddtowns have size at most $n$. Over the last four decades, many extensions of this even/oddtown problem have been studied. In this paper we present new results on two such extensions. First, extending a result of Vu, we show that a $k$-wise eventown (i.e., intersections of $k$ sets are even) has for $k \geq 3$ a unique extremal configuration and obtain a stability result for this problem. Next we improve some known bounds for the defect version of an $\ell$-oddtown problem. In this problem we consider sets of size $\not\equiv 0 \pmod \ell$ where $\ell$ is a prime number $\ell$ (not necessarily $2$) and allow a few pairwise intersections to also have size $\not\equiv 0 \pmod \ell$.

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arXiv2016

Bounded-degree spanning trees in randomly perturbed graphs

We show that for any fixed dense graph G and bounded-degree tree T on the same number of vertices, a modest random perturbation of G will typically contain a copy of T . This combines the viewpoints of the well-studied problems of embedding trees into fixed dense graphs and into random graphs, and extends a sizeable body of existing research on randomly perturbed graphs. Specifically, we show that there is $c = c(α,Δ)$ such that if G is an n-vertex graph with minimum degree at least $αn$, and T is an n-vertex tree with maximum degree at most $Δ$ , then if we add cn uniformly random edges to G, the resulting graph will contain T asymptotically almost surely (as $n\to\infty$ ). Our proof uses a lemma concerning the decomposition of a dense graph into super-regular pairs of comparable sizes, which may be of independent interest.

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arXiv2016

Counting Hamilton decompositions of oriented graphs

A Hamilton cycle in a directed graph $G$ is a cycle that passes through every vertex of $G$. A Hamiltonian decomposition of $G$ is a partition of its edge set into disjoint Hamilton cycles. In the late $60$s Kelly conjectured that every regular tournament has a Hamilton decomposition. This conjecture was recently settled by Kühn and Osthus, who proved more generally that every $r$-regular $n$-vertex oriented graph $G$ (without antiparallel edges) with $r=cn$ for some fixed $c>3/8$ has a Hamiltonian decomposition, provided $n=n(c)$ is sufficiently large. In this paper we address the natural question of estimating the number of such decompositions of $G$ and show that this number is $n^{(1-o(1))cn^2}$. In addition, we also obtain a new and much simpler proof for the approximate version of Kelly's conjecture.

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arXiv2016

The number of Hamiltonian decompositions of regular graphs

A Hamilton cycle in a graph $Γ$ is a cycle passing through every vertex of $Γ$. A Hamiltonian decomposition of $Γ$ is a partition of its edge set into disjoint Hamilton cycles. One of the oldest results in graph theory is Walecki's theorem from the 19th century, showing that a complete graph $K_n$ on an odd number of vertices $n$ has a Hamiltonian decomposition. This result was recently greatly extended by Kühn and Osthus. They proved that every $r$-regular $n$-vertex graph $Γ$ with even degree $r=cn$ for some fixed $c>1/2$ has a Hamiltonian decomposition, provided $n=n(c)$ is sufficiently large. In this paper we address the natural question of estimating $H(Γ)$, the number of such decompositions of $Γ$. Our main result is that $H(Γ)=r^{(1+o(1))nr/2}$. In particular, the number of Hamiltonian decompositions of $K_n$ is $n^{(1-o(1))n^2/2}$.

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arXiv2016

Random subgraphs of properly edge-coloured complete graphs and long rainbow cycles

A subgraph of an edge-coloured complete graph is called rainbow if all its edges have different colours. In 1980 Hahn conjectured that every properly edge-coloured complete graph $K_n$ has a rainbow Hamiltonian path. Although this conjecture turned out to be false, it was widely believed that such a colouring always contains a rainbow cycle of length almost $n$. In this paper, improving on several earlier results, we confirm this by proving that every properly edge-coloured $K_n$ has a rainbow cycle of length $n-O(n^{3/4})$. One of the main ingredients of our proof, which is of independent interest, shows that a random subgraph of a properly edge-coloured $K_n$ formed by the edges of a random set of colours has a similar edge distribution as a truly random graph with the same edge density. In particular it has very good expansion properties.

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arXiv2016

Finding Hamilton cycles in random graphs with few queries

We introduce a new setting of algorithmic problems in random graphs, studying the minimum number of queries one needs to ask about the adjacency between pairs of vertices of ${\mathcal G}(n,p)$ in order to typically find a subgraph possessing a given target property. We show that if $p\geq \frac{\ln n+\ln\ln n+ω(1)}{n}$, then one can find a Hamilton cycle with high probability after exposing $(1+o(1))n$ edges. Our result is tight in both $p$ and the number of exposed edges.

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arXiv2016

Finding paths in sparse random graphs requires many queries

We discuss a new algorithmic type of problem in random graphs studying the minimum number of queries one has to ask about adjacency between pairs of vertices of a random graph $G\sim {\mathcal G}(n,p)$ in order to find a subgraph which possesses some target property with high probability. In this paper we focus on finding long paths in $G\sim \mathcal G(n,p)$ when $p=\frac{1+\varepsilon}{n}$ for some fixed constant $\varepsilon>0$. This random graph is known to have typically linearly long paths. To have $\ell$ edges with high probability in $G\sim \mathcal G(n,p)$ one clearly needs to query at least $Ω\left(\frac{\ell}{p}\right)$ pairs of vertices. Can we find a path of length $\ell$ economically, i.e., by querying roughly that many pairs? We argue that this is not possible and one needs to query significantly more pairs. We prove that any randomised algorithm which finds a path of length $\ell=Ω\left(\frac{\log\left(\frac{1}{\varepsilon}\right)}{\varepsilon}\right)$ with at least constant probability in $G\sim \mathcal G(n,p)$ with $p=\frac{1+\varepsilon}{n}$ must query at least $Ω\left(\frac{\ell}{p\varepsilon \log\left(\frac{1}{\varepsilon}\right)}\right)$ pairs of vertices. This is tight up to the $\log\left(\frac{1}{\varepsilon}\right)$ factor.

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arXiv2016

The number of additive triples in subsets of abelian groups

A set of elements of a finite abelian group is called sum-free if it contains no Schur triple, i.e., no triple of elements $x,y,z$ with $x+y=z$. The study of how large the largest sum-free subset of a given abelian group is had started more than thirty years before it was finally resolved by Green and Ruzsa a decade ago. We address the following more general question. Suppose that a set $A$ of elements of an abelian group $G$ has cardinality $a$. How many Schur triples must $A$ contain? Moreover, which sets of $a$ elements of $G$ have the smallest number of Schur triples? In this paper, we answer these questions for various groups $G$ and ranges of $a$.

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arXiv2016

Properly colored and rainbow copies of graphs with few cherries

Let G be an n-vertex graph that contains linearly many cherries (i.e., paths on 3 vertices), and let c be a coloring of the edges of the complete graph K_n such that at each vertex every color appears only constantly many times. In 1979, Shearer conjectured that such a coloring c must contain a properly colored copy of G. We establish this conjecture in a strong form, showing that it holds even for graphs G with O(n^(4/3)) cherries and moreover this bound on the number of cherries is best possible up to a constant factor. We also prove that one can find a rainbow copy of such G in every edge-coloring of K_n in which all colors appear bounded number of times. Our proofs combine a framework of Lu and Szekely for using the lopsided Lovasz local lemma in the space of random bijections together with some additional ideas.

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arXiv2016

Anagram-free colorings of graphs

A sequence $S$ is called anagram-free if it contains no consecutive symbols $r_1 r_2\dots r_k r_{k+1} \dots r_{2k}$ such that $r_{k+1} \dots r_{2k}$ is a permutation of the block $r_1 r_2\dots r_k$. Answering a question of Erdős and Brown, Keränen constructed an infinite anagram-free sequence on four symbols. Motivated by the work of Alon, Grytczuk, Hałuszczak and Riordan, we consider a natural generalisation of anagram-free sequences for graph colorings. A coloring of the vertices of a given graph $G$ is called anagram-free if the sequence of colors on any path in $G$ is anagram-free. We call the minimal number of colors needed for such a coloring the anagram-chromatic number of $G$. In this paper we study the anagram-chromatic number of several classes of graphs like trees, minor-free graphs and bounded-degree graphs. Surprisingly, we show that there are bounded-degree graphs (such as random regular graphs) in which anagrams cannot be avoided unless we basically give each vertex a separate color.

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arXiv2016

The extremal function for cycles of length $\ell$ mod $k$

Burr and Erdős conjectured that for each $k,\ell \in \mathbb Z^+$ such that $k \mathbb Z + \ell$ contains even integers, there exists $c_k(\ell)$ such that any graph of average degree at least $c_k(\ell)$ contains a cycle of length $\ell$ mod $k$. This conjecture was proved by Bollobás, and many successive improvements of upper bounds on $c_k(\ell)$ appear in the literature. In this short note, for $1 \leq \ell \leq k$, we show that $c_k(\ell)$ is proportional to the largest average degree of a $C_{\ell}$-free graph on $k$ vertices, which determines $c_k(\ell)$ up to an absolute constant. In particular, using known results on Turán numbers for even cycles, we obtain $c_k(\ell) = O(\ell k^{2/\ell})$ for all even $\ell$, which is tight for $\ell \in \{4,6,10\}$. Since the complete bipartite graph $K_{\ell - 1,n - \ell + 1}$ has no cycle of length $2\ell$ mod $k$, it also shows $c_k(\ell) = Θ(\ell)$ for $\ell = Ω(\log k)$.

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arXiv2016

Ramsey goodness of paths

Given a pair of graphs $G$ and $H$, the Ramsey number $R(G,H)$ is the smallest $N$ such that every red-blue coloring of the edges of the complete graph $K_N$ contains a red copy of $G$ or a blue copy of $H$. If graph $G$ is connected, it is well known and easy to show that $R(G,H) \geq (|G|-1)(χ(H)-1)+σ(H)$, where $χ(H)$ is the chromatic number of $H$ and $σ$ the size of the smallest color class in a $χ(H)$-coloring of $H$. A graph $G$ is called $H$-good if $R(G,H)= (|G|-1)(χ(H)-1)+σ(H)$. The notion of Ramsey goodness was introduced by Burr and Erdős in 1983 and has been extensively studied since then. In this short note we prove that $n$-vertex path $P_n$ is $H$-good for all $n\geq 4|H|$. This proves in a strong form a conjecture of Allen, Brightwell, and Skokan.

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arXiv2016

Testing Equality in Communication Graphs

Let $G=(V,E)$ be a connected undirected graph with $k$ vertices. Suppose that on each vertex of the graph there is a player having an $n$-bit string. Each player is allowed to communicate with its neighbors according to an agreed communication protocol, and the players must decide, deterministically, if their inputs are all equal. What is the minimum possible total number of bits transmitted in a protocol solving this problem ? We determine this minimum up to a lower order additive term in many cases (but not for all graphs). In particular, we show that it is $kn/2+o(n)$ for any Hamiltonian $k$-vertex graph, and that for any $2$-edge connected graph with $m$ edges containing no two adjacent vertices of degree exceeding $2$ it is $mn/2+o(n)$. The proofs combine graph theoretic ideas with tools from additive number theory.

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arXiv2016

Ordered Ramsey numbers

Given a labeled graph $H$ with vertex set $\{1, 2,\ldots,n\}$, the ordered Ramsey number $r_<(H)$ is the minimum $N$ such that every two-coloring of the edges of the complete graph on $\{1, 2, \ldots,N\}$ contains a copy of $H$ with vertices appearing in the same order as in $H$. The ordered Ramsey number of a labeled graph $H$ is at least the Ramsey number $r(H)$ and the two coincide for complete graphs. However, we prove that even for matchings there are labelings where the ordered Ramsey number is superpolynomial in the number of vertices. Among other results, we also prove a general upper bound on ordered Ramsey numbers which implies that there exists a constant $c$ such that $r_<(H) \leq r(H)^{c \log^2 n}$ for any labeled graph $H$ on vertex set $\{1,2, \dots, n\}$.

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arXiv2016

Saturation in random graphs

A graph $H$ is $K_s$-saturated if it is a maximal $K_s$-free graph, i.e., $H$ contains no clique on $s$ vertices, but the addition of any missing edge creates one. The minimum number of edges in a $K_s$-saturated graph was determined over 50 years ago by Zykov and independently by Erdős, Hajnal and Moon. In this paper, we study the random analog of this problem: minimizing the number of edges in a maximal $K_s$-free subgraph of the Erdős-Rényi random graph $G(n,p)$. We give asymptotically tight estimates on this minimum, and also provide exact bounds for the related notion of weak saturation in random graphs. Our results reveal some surprising behavior of these parameters.

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