Searcharxiv⌕ Search

arXiv subjects

István Tomon

Publications and source records attributed to István Tomon.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

On $3$-graphs with no four vertices spanning exactly two edges

Let $D_2$ denote the $3$-uniform hypergraph with $4$ vertices and $2$ edges. Answering a question of Alon and Shapira, we prove an induced removal lemma for $D_2$ having polynomial bounds. We also prove an Erdős-Hajnal-type result: every induced $D_2$-free hypergraph on $n$ vertices contains a clique or an independent set of size $n^{c}$ for some absolute constant $c > 0$. In the case of both problems, $D_2$ is the only nontrivial $k$-uniform hypergraph with $k\geq 3$ which admits a polynomial bound.

math.CO↗

The Turán number of the grid

For a positive integer $t$, let $F_t$ denote the graph of the $t\times t$ grid. Motivated by a 50-year-old conjecture of Erdős about Turán numbers of $r$-degenerate graphs, we prove that there exists a constant $C=C(t)$ such that $\mathrm{ex}(n,F_t)\leq Cn^{3/2}$. This bound is tight up to the value of $C$. One of the interesting ingredients of our proof is a novel way of using the tensor power trick.

math.CO↗

Additive bases, coset covers, and non-vanishing linear maps

Recently, the first two authors proved the Alon-Jaeger-Tarsi conjecture on non-vanishing linear maps, for large primes. We extend their ideas to address several other related conjectures. We prove the weak Additive Basis conjecture proposed by Szegedy, making a significant step towards the Additive Basis conjecture of Jaeger, Linial, Payan, and Tarsi. In fact, we prove it in a strong form: there exists a set $A\subset\mathbb{F}_p^*$ of size $O(\log p)$ such that if $B\subset\mathbb{F}_p^{n}$ is the union of $p$ linear bases, then $A\cdot B=\{a\cdot v:a\in A, v\in B\}$ is an additive basis. An old result of Tomkinson states that if $G$ is a group, and $\{H_{i}x_{i}:i\in [k]\}$ is an irredundant coset cover of $G$, then $|G:\bigcap_{i\in [k]} H_{i}|\leq k!,$ and this bound is the best possible. It is a longstanding open problem whether the upper bound can be improved to $e^{O(k)}$ in case we restrict cosets to subgroups. Pyber proposed to study this question for abelian groups. We show that somewhat surprisingly, if $G$ is abelian, the upper bound can be improved to $e^{O(k\log \log k)}$ already in the case of general coset covers, making the first substantial improvement over the $k!$ bound. Finally, we prove a natural generalization of the Alon-Jaeger-Tarsi conjecture for multiple matrices.

math.CO↗

Ramsey properties of algebraic graphs and hypergraphs

One of the central questions in Ramsey theory asks how small can be the size of the largest clique and independent set in a graph on $N$ vertices. By the celebrated result of Erdős from 1947, the random graph on $N$ vertices with edge probability $1/2$, contains no clique or independent set larger than $2\log_2 N$, with high probability. Finding explicit constructions of graphs with similar Ramsey-type properties is a famous open problem. A natural approach is to construct such graphs using algebraic tools. Say that an $r$-uniform hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$ is \emph{algebraic of complexity $(n,d,m)$} if the vertices of $\mathcal{H}$ are elements of $\mathbb{F}^{n}$ for some field $\mathbb{F}$, and there exist $m$ polynomials $f_1,\dots,f_m:(\mathbb{F}^{n})^{r}\rightarrow \mathbb{F}$ of degree at most $d$ such that the edges of $\mathcal{H}$ are determined by the zero-patterns of $f_1,\dots,f_m$. The aim of this paper is to show that if an algebraic graph (or hypergraph) of complexity $(n,d,m)$ has good Ramsey properties, then at least one of the parameters $n,d,m$ must be large. In 2001, Rónyai, Babai and Ganapathy considered the bipartite variant of the Ramsey problem and proved that if $G$ is an algebraic graph of complexity $(n,d,m)$ on $N$ vertices, then either $G$ or its complement contains a complete balanced bipartite graph of size $Ω_{n,d,m}(N^{1/(n+1)})$. We extend this result by showing that such $G$ contains either a clique or an independent set of size $N^{Ω(1/ndm)}$ and prove similar results for algebraic hypergraphs of constant complexity. We also obtain a polynomial regularity lemma for $r$-uniform algebraic hypergraphs that are defined by a single polynomial, that might be of independent interest. Our proofs combine algebraic, geometric and combinatorial tools.

math.CO↗

Flattening rank and its combinatorial applications

Given a $d$-dimensional tensor $T:A_1\times\dots\times A_d\rightarrow \mathbb{F}$ (where $\mathbb{F}$ is a field), the $i$-flattening rank of $T$ is the rank of the matrix whose rows are indexed by $A_{i}$, columns are indexed by $B_{i}=A_1\times\dots\times A_{i-1}\times A_{i+1}\times\dots\times A_{d}$ and whose entries are given by the corresponding values of $T$. The max-flattening rank of $T$ is defined as $\text{mfrank}(T)=\max_{i\in [d]}\text{frank}_{i}(T)$. A tensor $T:A^{d}\rightarrow\mathbb{F}$ is called semi-diagonal, if $T(a,\dots,a)\neq 0$ for every $a\in A$, and $T(a_{1},\dots,a_{d})=0$ for every $a_{1},\dots,a_{d}\in A$ that are all distinct. In this paper we prove that if $T:A^{d}\rightarrow\mathbb{F}$ is semi-diagonal, then $\text{mfrank}(T)\geq \frac{|A|}{d-1}$, and this bound is the best possible. We give several applications of this result, including a generalization of the celebrated Frankl-Wilson theorem on forbidden intersections. Also, addressing a conjecture of Aharoni and Berger, we show that if the edges of an $r$-uniform multi-hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$ are colored with $z$ colors such that each colorclass is a matching of size $t$, then $\mathcal{H}$ contains a rainbow matching of size $t$ provided $z>(t-1)\binom{rt}{r}$. This improves previous results of Alon and Glebov, Sudakov and Szabó.

math.CO↗

Ramsey properties of semilinear graphs

A graph $G$ is semilinear of complexity $t$ if the vertices of $G$ are elements of $\mathbb{R}^{d}$ for some $d\in\mathbb{Z}^{+}$, and the edges of $G$ are defined by the sign patterns of $t$ linear functions $f_1,\dots,f_t:\mathbb{R}^{d}\times \mathbb{R}^{d}\rightarrow\mathbb{R}$. We show that semilinear graphs of constant complexity have very tame Ramsey properties. More precisely, we prove that if $G$ is a semilinear graph of complexity $t$ which contains no clique of size $s$ and no independent set of size $n$, then $G$ has at most $O_{s,t}(n)\cdot(\log n)^{O_t(1)}$ vertices. We also show that the logarithmic term cannot be omitted. In particular, this implies that if $G$ is a semilinear graph of constant complexity on $n$ vertices, and $G$ contains no clique of size $s$, then $G$ can be properly colored with $\mbox{polylog}(n)$ colors. In the past 60 years, this coloring question was extensively studied for several special instances of semilinear graphs, e.g. shift graphs, intersection and disjointness graphs of certain geometric objects, and overlap graphs. Our main result provides a general upper bound on the chromatic number of all such, seemingly unrelated, graphs. Furthermore, we consider the symmetric Ramsey problem for semilinear graphs as well. It is known that if there exists an intersection graph of $N$ boxes in $\mathbb{R}^{d}$ (such graphs are semilinear of complexity $2d$) that contains no clique or independent set of size $n$, then $N=O_d(n^2(\log n)^{d-1})$. That is, the exponent of $n$ does not grow with the dimension. We prove a result about the symmetric Ramsey properties of semilinear graphs, which puts this phenomenon in a more general context.

math.CO↗

Long directed paths in Eulerian digraphs

An old conjecture of Bollobás and Scott asserts that every Eulerian directed graph with average degree $d$ contains a directed cycle of length at least $Ω(d)$. The best known lower bound for this problem is $Ω(d^{1/2})$ by Huang, Ma, Shapira, Sudakov and Yuster. They asked whether this estimate can be improved at least for directed paths instead of cycles and whether one can find a long path starting from any vertex if the host digraph is connected. In this paper we break the $\sqrt{d}$ barrier, showing how to find a path of length $Ω(d^{1/2+1/40})$ from any vertex of a connected Eulerian digraph.

math.CO↗

The extremal number of surfaces

In 1973, Brown, Erdős and Sós proved that if $\mathcal{H}$ is a 3-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices which contains no triangulation of the sphere, then $\mathcal{H}$ has at most $O(n^{5/2})$ edges, and this bound is the best possible up to a constant factor. Resolving a conjecture of Linial, also reiterated by Keevash, Long, Narayanan, and Scott, we show that the same result holds for triangulations of the torus. Furthermore, we extend our result to every closed orientable surface $\mathcal{S}$.

math.CO↗

Large homogeneous submatrices

A matrix is homogeneous if all of its entries are equal. Let $P$ be a $2\times 2$ zero-one matrix that is not homogeneous. We prove that if an $n\times n$ zero-one matrix $A$ does not contain $P$ as a submatrix, then $A$ has an $cn\times cn$ homogeneous submatrix for a suitable constant $c>0$. We further provide an almost complete characterization of the matrices $P$ (missing only finitely many cases) such that forbidding $P$ in $A$ guarantees an $n^{1-o(1)}\times n^{1-o(1)}$ homogeneous submatrix. We apply our results to chordal bipartite graphs, totally balanced matrices, halfplane-arrangements and string graphs.

math.CO↗

Improved Ramsey-type results for comparability graphs

Several discrete geometry problems are equivalent to estimating the size of the largest homogeneous sets in graphs that happen to be the union of few comparability graphs. An important observation for such results is that if $G$ is an $n$-vertex graph that is the union of $r$ comparability (or more generally, perfect) graphs, then either $G$ or its complement contains a clique of size $n^{1/(r+1)}$. This bound is known to be tight for $r=1$. The question whether it is optimal for $r\ge 2$ was studied by Dumitrescu and Tóth. We prove that it is essentially best possible for $r=2$, as well: we introduce a probabilistic construction of two comparability graphs on $n$ vertices, whose union contains no clique or independent set of size $n^{1/3+o(1)}$. Using similar ideas, we can also construct a graph $G$ that is the union of $r$ comparability graphs, and neither $G$, nor its complement contains a complete bipartite graph with parts of size $\frac{cn}{(\log n)^r}$. With this, we improve a result of Fox and Pach.

math.CO↗

Turán-type results for intersection graphs of boxes

In this short note, we prove the following analog of the Kővári-Sós-Turán theorem for intersection graphs of boxes. If $G$ is the intersection graph of $n$ axis-parallel boxes in $\mathbb{R}^{d}$ such that $G$ contains no copy of $K_{t,t}$, then $G$ has at most $ctn(\log n)^{2d+3}$ edges, where $c=c(d)>0$ only depends on $d$. Our proof is based on exploring connections between boxicity, separation dimension and poset dimension. Using this approach, we also show that a construction of Basit et al. of $K_{2,2}$-free incidence graphs of points and rectangles in the plane can be used to disprove a conjecture of Alon et al. We show that there exist graphs of separation dimension 4 having superlinear number of edges.

math.CO↗

The extremal number of tight cycles

A tight cycle in an $r$-uniform hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$ is a sequence of $\ell\geq r+1$ vertices $x_1,\dots,x_{\ell}$ such that all $r$-tuples $\{x_{i},x_{i+1},\dots,x_{i+r-1}\}$ (with subscripts modulo $\ell$) are edges of $\mathcal{H}$. An old problem of V. Sós, also posed independently by J. Verstraëte, asks for the maximum number of edges in an $r$-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices which has no tight cycle. Although this is a very basic question, until recently, no good upper bounds were known for this problem for $r\geq 3$. Here we prove that the answer is at most $n^{r-1+o(1)}$, which is tight up to the $o(1)$ error term. Our proof is based on finding robust expanders in the line graph of $\mathcal{H}$ together with certain density increment type arguments.

math.CO↗

Infinite Sperner's theorem

One of the most classical results in extremal set theory is Sperner's theorem, which says that the largest antichain in the Boolean lattice $2^{[n]}$ has size $Θ\big(\frac{2^n}{\sqrt{n}}\big)$. Motivated by an old problem of Erdős on the growth of infinite Sidon sequences, in this note we study the growth rate of maximum infinite antichains. Using the well known Kraft's inequality for prefix codes, it is not difficult to show that infinite antichains should be "thinner" than the corresponding finite ones. More precisely, if $\mathcal{F}\subset 2^{\mathbb{N}}$ is an antichain, then $$\liminf_{n\rightarrow \infty}\big|\mathcal{F} \cap 2^{[n]}\big|\left(\frac{2^n}{n\log n}\right)^{-1}=0.$$ Our main result shows that this bound is essentially tight, that is, we construct an antichain $\mathcal{F}$ such that $$\liminf_{n\rightarrow \infty}\big|\mathcal{F} \cap 2^{[n]}\big|\left(\frac{2^n}{n\log^{C} n}\right)^{-1}>0$$ holds for some absolute constant $C>0$.

math.CO↗

Erdős-Hajnal-type results for ordered paths

An ordered graph is a graph with a linear ordering on its vertex set. We prove that for every positive integer $k$, there exists a constant $c_k>0$ such that any ordered graph $G$ on $n$ vertices with the property that neither $G$ nor its complement contains an induced monotone path of size $k$, has either a clique or an independent set of size at least $n^{c_k}$. This strengthens a result of Bousquet, Lagoutte, and Thomassé, who proved the analogous result for unordered graphs. A key idea of the above paper was to show that any unordered graph on $n$ vertices that does not contain an induced path of size $k$, and whose maximum degree is at most $c(k)n$ for some small $c(k)>0$, contains two disjoint linear size subsets with no edge between them. This approach fails for ordered graphs, because the analogous statement is false for $k\geq 3$, by a construction of Fox. We provide further examples how this statement fails for ordered graphs avoiding other ordered trees as well.

math.CO↗

String graphs have the Erdős-Hajnal property

A string graph is the intersection graph of curves in the plane. We prove that there exists an absolute constant $c>0$ such that if $G$ is a string graph on $n$ vertices, then $G$ contains either a clique or an independent set of size at least $n^{c}$.

math.CO↗

Hasse diagrams with large chromatic number

For every positive integer $n$, we construct a Hasse diagram with $n$ vertices and chromatic number $Ω(n^{1/4})$, which significantly improves on the previously known best constructions of Hasse diagrams having chromatic number $Θ(\log n)$. In addition, if we also require that our Hasse diagram has girth at least $k\geq 5$, we can achieve a chromatic number of at least $n^{\frac{1}{2k-3}+o(1)}$. These results have the following surprising geometric consequence. They imply the existence of a family $\mathcal{C}$ of $n$ curves in the plane such that the disjointness graph $G$ of $\mathcal{C}$ is triangle-free (or have high girth), but the chromatic number of $G$ is polynomial in $n$. Again, the previously known best construction, due to Pach, Tardos and Tóth, had only logarithmic chromatic number.

math.CO↗

Colorings with only rainbow arithmetic progressions

If we want to color $1,2,\ldots,n$ with the property that all 3-term arithmetic progressions are rainbow (that is, their elements receive 3 distinct colors), then, obviously, we need to use at least $n/2$ colors. Surprisingly, much fewer colors suffice if we are allowed to leave a negligible proportion of integers uncolored. Specifically, we prove that there exist $α,β<1$ such that for every $n$, there is a subset $A$ of $\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$ of size at least $n-n^α$, the elements of which can be colored with $n^β$ colors with the property that every 3-term arithmetic progression in $A$ is rainbow. Moreover, $β$ can be chosen to be arbitrarily small. Our result can be easily extended to $k$-term arithmetic progressions for any $k\ge 3$. As a corollary, we obtain the following result of Alon, Moitra, and Sudakov, which can be used to design efficient communication protocols over shared directional multi-channels. There exist $α',β'<1$ such that for every $n$, there is a graph with $n$ vertices and at least $\binom{n}{2}-n^{1+α'}$ edges, whose edge set can be partitioned into at most $n^{1+β'}$ induced matchings.

math.CO↗

Turán number of bipartite graphs with no $K_{t,t}$

The extremal number of a graph $H$, denoted by $\mbox{ex}(n,H)$, is the maximum number of edges in a graph on $n$ vertices that does not contain $H$. The celebrated Kővári-Sós-Turán theorem says that for a complete bipartite graph with parts of size $t\leq s$ the extremal number is $\mbox{ex}(K_{s,t})=O(n^{2-1/t})$. It is also known that this bound is sharp if $s>(t-1)!$. In this paper, we prove that if $H$ is a bipartite graph such that all vertices in one of its parts have degree at most $t$, but $H$ contains no copy of $K_{t,t}$, then $\mbox{ex}(n,H)=o(n^{2-1/t})$. This verifies a conjecture of Conlon, Janzer and Lee.

math.CO↗