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Jan Volec

Publications and source records attributed to Jan Volec.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

Maximizing $K_r + I_r$ in graphs with fixed edge density

For every integer $r\ge4$, and $\rho \in [0,1]$, we asymptotically determine the maximum proportion of $r$-element sets of vertices that induce either a clique or an independent set in a large graph with density $\rho$. This generalizes a result of Olpp for $r=3$. After the initial idea for the main proof was found by the authors, various AI models were used to streamline the argument and perform the calculations necessary for completion of the proof.

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arXiv2026

Strong edge-colouring via local flag algebras

The strong chromatic index $\chi'_s(G)$ is the smallest number of colours needed to colour the edges of a graph $G$ so that any two edges at distance at most $2$ receive different colours. Using the \emph{local flag algebra} framework introduced in a companion paper, we prove $\chi'_s(G) \leq 1.73\,\Delta(G)^2$ for every graph $G$ of maximum degree $\Delta(G)$, $\chi'_s(G) \leq 1.6255\,\Delta(G)^2$ for every bipartite $G$, and $\chi'_s(G) \leq 1.6633\,\Delta_A(G)\,\Delta_B(G)$ for every bipartite $G$ of side maximum degrees $\Delta_A(G), \Delta_B(G)$ with rational $\Delta_B(G)/\Delta_A(G) \in (0, 1]$, provided $\Delta(G)$, $\Delta_A(G)$, $\Delta_B(G)$ are sufficiently large. These three bounds make progress towards three established conjectures: those of Erd\H{o}s-Ne\v{s}et\v{r}il (1985) for general graphs, Faudree-Gy\'arf\'as-Schelp-Tuza (1989) for bipartite graphs, and Brualdi-Quinn Massey (1993) in the asymmetric bipartite setting. Additionally, for the random bipartite graph $G \sim G(n_A, n_B, p)$ at constant $p \in (0,1)$ and bounded aspect ratio $\max(n_A, n_B) = O(\min(n_A, n_B))$, we prove the Brualdi-Quinn Massey bound $\chi'_s(G) \leq \Delta_A(G)\,\Delta_B(G)$ asymptotically almost surely.

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arXiv2026

Local flag algebras

We introduce local flag algebras, a variant of Razborov's flag algebra framework in which densities are normalised by the maximum degree $\Delta(G)$ rather than the order $|G|$. The framework supports the same semidefinite-method machinery as the classical version, but is tailored to extremal problems that scale with the maximum degree. As an illustrative first application we bound the number of pentagons in a triangle-free graph $G$ as a function of $|G|$ and $\Delta(G)$.

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arXiv2026

Sidorenko property and forcing in regular tournaments

We give a complete characterization of tournaments H that have the Sidorenko property with respect to nearly regular tournaments, i.e., the homomorphism density of H among all nearly regular tournaments is minimized by a random tournament. Corollaries of our result are a positive answer to the question of Noel, Ranganathan and Simbaqueba whether there exist infinitely many non-transitive tournaments that are quasirandom forcing for nearly regular tournaments, and a negative answer to their question whether almost every tournament is quasirandom forcing for nearly regular tournaments.

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arXiv2026

Semi-Inducibility of some small graphs

Let $H$ be a fixed graph whose edges are colored red and blue and let $\beta \in [0,1]$. Let $I(H, \beta)$ be the (asymptotically normalized) maximum number of copies of $H$ in a large red/blue edge-colored complete graph $G$, where the density of red edges in $G$ is $\beta$. This refines the problem of determining the semi-inducibility of $H$, which is itself a generalization of the classical question of determining the inducibility of $H$. The function $I(H, \beta)$ for $\beta \in [0,1]$ was not known for any graph $H$ on more than three vertices, except when $H$ is a monochromatic clique (Kruskal-Katona) or a monochromatic star (Reiher-Wagner). We obtain sharp results for some four and five vertex graphs, addressing several recent questions posed by various authors. We also obtain some general results for trees and stars. Many open problems remain.

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arXiv2025

Lower bounds on the minimal dispersion of point sets via cover-free families

We elaborate on the intimate connection between the largest volume of an empty axis-parallel box in a set of $n$ points from $[0,1]^d$ and cover-free families from the extremal set theory. This connection was discovered in a recent paper of the authors. In this work, we apply a very recent result of Michel and Scott to obtain a whole range of new lower bounds on the number of points needed so that the largest volume of such a box is bounded by a given $\varepsilon$. Surprisingly, it turns out that for each of the new bounds, there is a choice of the parameters $d$ and $\varepsilon$ such that the bound outperforms the others.

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arXiv2024

Tight Hamiltonicity from dense links of triples

We show that for all $k\geq 4$, $\varepsilon >0$, and $n$ sufficiently large, every $k$-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices in which each set of $k-3$ vertices is contained in at least $(5/8 + \varepsilon) \binom{n}{3}$ edges contains a tight Hamilton cycle. This is asymptotically best possible.

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arXiv2023

A tight lower bound on the minimal dispersion

We give a new lower bound for the minimal dispersion of a point set in the unit cube and its inverse function in the high dimension regime. This is done by considering only a very small class of test boxes, which allows us to reduce bounding the dispersion to a problem in extremal set theory. Specifically, we translate a lower bound on the size of $r$-cover-free families to a lower bound on the inverse of the minimal dispersion of a point set. The lower bound we obtain matches the recently obtained upper bound on the minimal dispersion up to logarithmic terms.

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arXiv2022

Common graphs with arbitrary chromatic number

Ramsey's Theorem guarantees for every graph H that any 2-edge-coloring of a sufficiently large complete graph contains a monochromatic copy of H. In 1962, Erdos conjectured that the random 2-edge-coloring minimizes the number of monochromatic copies of K_k, and the conjecture was extended by Burr and Rosta to all graphs. In the late 1980s, the conjectures were disproved by Thomason and Sidorenko, respectively. A classification of graphs whose number of monochromatic copies is minimized by the random 2-edge-coloring, which are referred to as common graphs, remains a challenging open problem. If Sidorenko's Conjecture, one of the most significant open problems in extremal graph theory, is true, then every 2-chromatic graph is common, and in fact, no 2-chromatic common graph unsettled for Sidorenko's Conjecture is known. While examples of 3-chromatic common graphs were known for a long time, the existence of a 4-chromatic common graph was open until 2012, and no common graph with a larger chromatic number is known. We construct connected k-chromatic common graphs for every k. This answers a question posed by Hatami, Hladky, Kral, Norine and Razborov [Combin. Probab. Comput. 21 (2012), 734-742], and a problem listed by Conlon, Fox and Sudakov [London Math. Soc. Lecture Note Ser. 424 (2015), 49-118, Problem 2.28]. This also answers in a stronger form the question raised by Jagger, Stovicek and Thomason [Combinatorica 16, (1996), 123-131] whether there exists a common graph with chromatic number at least four.

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arXiv2022

The Spectrum of Triangle-free Graphs

Denote by $q_n(G)$ the smallest eigenvalue of the signless Laplacian matrix of an $n$-vertex graph $G$. Brandt conjectured in 1997 that for regular triangle-free graphs $q_n(G) \leq \frac{4n}{25}$. We prove a stronger result: If $G$ is a triangle-free graph then $q_n(G) \leq \frac{15n}{94}< \frac{4n}{25}$. Brandt's conjecture is a subproblem of two famous conjectures of Erd\H{o}s: (1) Sparse-Half-Conjecture: Every $n$-vertex triangle-free graph has a subset of vertices of size $\left\lfloor\frac{n}{2}\right\rfloor$ spanning at most $n^2/50$ edges. (2) Every $n$-vertex triangle-free graph can be made bipartite by removing at most $n^2/25$ edges. In our proof we use linear algebraic methods to upper bound $q_n(G)$ by the ratio between the number of induced paths with 3 and 4 vertices. We give an upper bound on this ratio via the method of flag algebras.

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arXiv2021

The codegree threshold of $K_4^-$

The codegree threshold $\mathrm{ex}_2(n, F)$ of a $3$-graph $F$ is the minimum $d=d(n)$ such that every $3$-graph on $n$ vertices in which every pair of vertices is contained in at least $d+1$ edges contains a copy of $F$ as a subgraph. We study $\mathrm{ex}_2(n, F)$ when $F=K_4^-$, the $3$-graph on $4$ vertices with $3$ edges. Using flag algebra techniques, we prove that if $n$ is sufficiently large then $\mathrm{ex}_2(n, K_4^-)\leq (n+1)/4$. This settles in the affirmative a conjecture of Nagle from 1999. In addition, we obtain a stability result: for every near-extremal configuration $G$, there is a quasirandom tournament $T$ on the same vertex set such that $G$ is close in the edit distance to the $3$-graph $C(T)$ whose edges are the cyclically oriented triangles from $T$. For infinitely many values of $n$, we are further able to determine $\mathrm{ex}_2(n, K_4^-)$ exactly and to show that tournament-based constructions $C(T)$ are extremal for those values of $n$.

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arXiv2021

Degree conditions forcing directed cycles

Caccetta-H\"{a}ggkvist conjecture is a longstanding open problem on degree conditions that force an oriented graph to contain a directed cycle of a bounded length. Motivated by this conjecture, Kelly, K\"uhn, and Osthus initiated a study of degree conditions forcing the containment of a directed cycle of a given length. In particular, they found the optimal minimum semidegree, that is, the smaller of the minimum indegree and the minimum outdegree, which forces a large oriented graph to contain a directed cycle of a given length not divisible by 3, and conjectured the optimal minimum semidegree for all the other cycles except the directed triangle. In this paper, we establish the best possible minimum semidegree that forces a large oriented graph to contain a directed cycle of a given length divisible by 3 yet not equal to 3, hence fully resolve the conjecture by Kelly, K\"{u}hn, and Osthus. We also find an asymptotically optimal semidegree threshold of any cycle with a given orientation of its edges with the sole exception of a directed triangle.

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arXiv2020

On tripartite common graphs

A graph H is common if the number of monochromatic copies of H in a 2-edge-colouring of the complete graph is minimised by the random colouring. Burr and Rosta, extending a famous conjecture by Erdos, conjectured that every graph is common. The conjectures by Erdos and by Burr and Rosta were disproved by Thomason and by Sidorenko, respectively, in the late 1980s. Collecting new examples for common graphs had not seen much progress since then, although very recently, a few more graphs are verified to be common by the flag algebra method or the recent progress on Sidorenko's conjecture. Our contribution here is to give a new class of tripartite common graphs. The first example class is so-called triangle-trees, which generalises two theorems by Sidorenko and answers a question by Jagger, \v{S}\v{t}ov\'i\v{c}ek, and Thomason from 1996. We also prove that, somewhat surprisingly, given any tree T, there exists a triangle-tree such that the graph obtained by adding T as a pendant tree is still common. Furthermore, we show that adding arbitrarily many apex vertices to any connected bipartite graph on at most five vertices give a common graph.

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arXiv2020

Towards characterizing locally common graphs

A graph H is common if the number of monochromatic copies of H in a 2-edge-coloring of the complete graph is asymptotically minimized by the random coloring. The classification of common graphs is one of the most intriguing problems in extremal graph theory. We study the notion of weakly locally common graphs considered by Cs\'oka, Hubai and Lov\'asz [arXiv:1912.02926], where the graph is required to be the minimizer with respect to perturbations of the random 2-edge-coloring. We give a complete analysis of the 12 initial terms in the Taylor series determining the number of monochromatic copies of H in such perturbations and classify graphs H based on this analysis into three categories: graphs of Class I are weakly locally common, graphs of Class II are not weakly locally common, and graphs of Class III cannot be determined to be weakly locally common or not based on the initial 12 terms. As a corollary, we obtain new necessary conditions on a graph to be common and new sufficient conditions on a graph to be not common.

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arXiv2020

Cycles of a given length in tournaments

We study the asymptotic behavior of the maximum number of directed cycles of a given length in a tournament: let $c(\ell)$ be the limit of the ratio of the maximum number of cycles of length $\ell$ in an $n$-vertex tournament and the expected number of cycles of length $\ell$ in the random $n$-vertex tournament, when $n$ tends to infinity. It is well-known that $c(3)=1$ and $c(4)=4/3$. We show that $c(\ell)=1$ if and only if $\ell$ is not divisible by four, which settles a conjecture of Bartley and Day. If $\ell$ is divisible by four, we show that $1+2\cdot\left(2/\pi\right)^{\ell}\le c(\ell)\le 1+\left(2/\pi+o(1)\right)^{\ell}$ and determine the value $c(\ell)$ exactly for $\ell = 8$. We also give a full description of the asymptotic structure of tournaments with the maximum number of cycles of length $\ell$ when $\ell$ is not divisible by four or $\ell\in\{4,8\}$.

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arXiv2020

Non-bipartite k-common graphs

A graph H is k-common if the number of monochromatic copies of H in a k-edge-coloring of K_n is asymptotically minimized by a random coloring. For every k, we construct a connected non-bipartite k-common graph. This resolves a problem raised by Jagger, Stovicek and Thomason [Combinatorica 16 (1996), 123-141]. We also show that a graph H is k-common for every k if and only if H is Sidorenko and that H is locally k-common for every k if and only if H is locally Sidorenko.

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arXiv2019

No additional tournaments are quasirandom-forcing

A tournament H is quasirandom-forcing if the following holds for every sequence (G_n) of tournaments of growing orders: if the density of H in G_n converges to the expected density of H in a random tournament, then (G_n) is quasirandom. Every transitive tournament with at least 4 vertices is quasirandom-forcing, and Coregliano et al. [Electron. J. Combin. 26 (2019), P1.44] showed that there is also a non-transitive 5-vertex tournament with the property. We show that no additional tournament has this property. This extends the result of Bucic et al. [Combinatorica 41 (2021), 175-208] that the non-transitive tournaments with seven or more vertices do not have this property.

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