arXiv subjects

Matija Bucić

Publications and source records attributed to Matija Bucić.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2024

Equivalence between Erdős-Hajnal and polynomial Rödl and Nikiforov conjectures

It is well-known that polynomial versions of theorems of Rödl and Nikiforov, as conjectured by Fox and Sudakov and Nguyen, Scott and Seymour imply the classical Erdős-Hajnal conjecture. In this note, we prove that these three conjectures are in fact equivalent, extending several previous particular results in this direction by Fox, Nguyen, Scott and Seymour; Nguyen, Scott and Seymour and Gishboliner and Shapira. We deduce that the family of string graphs satisfies the polynomial Rödl conjecture. We also derive analogous results for hypergraphs, tournaments, ordered graphs, and colored graphs.

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arXiv2024

Induced subgraph density. I. A loglog step towards Erdos-Hajnal

In 1977, Erdős and Hajnal made the conjecture that, for every graph $H$, there exists $c>0$ such that every $H$-free graph $G$ has a clique or stable set of size at least $|G|^c$; and they proved that this is true with $ |G|^c$ replaced by $2^{c\sqrt{\log |G|}}$. Until now, there has been no improvement on this result (for general $H$). We prove a strengthening: that for every graph $H$, there exists $c>0$ such that every $H$-free graph $G$ with $|G|\ge 2$ has a clique or stable set of size at least $$2^{c\sqrt{\log |G|\log\log|G|}}.$$ Indeed, we prove the corresponding strengthening of a theorem of Fox and Sudakov, which in turn was a common strengthening of theorems of Rödl, Nikiforov, and the theorem of Erdős and Hajnal mentioned above.

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arXiv2023

Towards the Erdős-Gallai Cycle Decomposition Conjecture

In the 1960's, Erdős and Gallai conjectured that the edges of any $n$-vertex graph can be decomposed into $O(n)$ cycles and edges. We improve upon the previous best bound of $O(n\log\log n)$ cycles and edges due to Conlon, Fox and Sudakov, by showing an $n$-vertex graph can always be decomposed into $O(n\log^{*}n)$ cycles and edges, where $\log^{*}n$ is the iterated logarithm function.

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arXiv2023

Towards the Erdős-Hajnal conjecture for $P_5$-free graphs

The Erdős-Hajnal conjecture is one of the most classical and well-known problems in extremal and structural combinatorics dating back to 1977. It asserts that in stark contrast to the case of a general $n$-vertex graph if one imposes even a little bit of structure on the graph, namely by forbidding a fixed graph $H$ as an induced subgraph, instead of only being able to find a polylogarithmic size clique or an independent set one can find one of polynomial size. Despite being the focus of considerable attention over the years the conjecture remains open. In this paper we improve the best known lower bound of $2^{Ω(\sqrt{\log n})}$ on this question, due to Erdős and Hajnal from 1989, in the smallest open case, namely when one forbids a $P_5$, the path on $5$ vertices. Namely, we show that any $P_5$-free $n$ vertex graph contains a clique or an independent set of size at least $2^{Ω(\log n)^{2/3}}$. Our methods also lead to the same improvement for an infinite family of graphs.

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arXiv2023

Large independent sets from local considerations

The following natural problem was raised independently by Erdős-Hajnal and Linial-Rabinovich in the late 80's. How large must the independence number $α(G)$ of a graph $G$ be whose every $m$ vertices contain an independent set of size $r$? In this paper we discuss new methods to attack this problem. The first new approach, based on bounding Ramsey numbers of certain graphs, allows us to improve previously best lower bounds due to Linial-Rabinovich, Erdős-Hajnal and Alon-Sudakov. As an example, we prove that any $n$-vertex graph $G$ having an independent set of size $3$ among every $7$ vertices has $α(G) \ge Ω(n^{5/12})$. This confirms a conjecture of Erdős and Hajnal that $α(G)$ should be at least $n^{1/3+\varepsilon}$ and brings the exponent half-way to the best possible value of $1/2$. Our second approach deals with upper bounds. It relies on a reduction of the original question to the following natural extremal problem. What is the minimum possible value of the $2$-density of a graph on $m$ vertices having no independent set of size $r$? This allows us to improve previous upper bounds due to Linial-Rabinovich, Krivelevich and Kostochka-Jancey. As part of our arguments we link the problem of Erdős-Hajnal and Linial-Rabinovich and our new extremal $2$-density problem to a number of other well-studied questions. This leads to many interesting directions for future research.

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arXiv2022

Covering random graphs with monochromatic trees

Given an $r$-edge-coloured complete graph $K_n$, how many monochromatic connected components does one need in order to cover its vertex set? This natural question is a well-known essentially equivalent formulation of the classical Ryser's conjecture which, despite a lot of attention over the last 50 years, still remains open. A number of recent papers consider a sparse random analogue of this question, asking for the minimum number of monochromatic components needed to cover the vertex set of an $r$-edge-coloured random graph $\mathcal{G}(n,p)$. Recently, Bucić, Korándi and Sudakov established a connection between this problem and a certain Helly-type local to global question for hypergraphs raised about 30 years ago by Erdős, Hajnal and Tuza. We identify a modified version of the hypergraph problem which controls the answer to the problem of covering random graphs with monochromatic components more precisely. To showcase the power of our approach, we essentially resolve the $3$-colour case by showing that $(\log n / n)^{1/4}$ is a threshold at which point three monochromatic components are needed to cover all vertices of a $3$-edge-coloured random graph, answering a question posed by Kohayakawa, Mendonça, Mota and Schülke. Our approach also allows us to determine the answer in the general $r$-edge coloured instance of the problem, up to lower order terms, around the point when it first becomes bounded, answering a question of Bucić, Korándi and Sudakov.

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arXiv2022

Uniform Turán density of cycles

In the early 1980s, Erdős and Sós initiated the study of the classical Turán problem with a uniformity condition: the uniform Turán density of a hypergraph $H$ is the infimum over all $d$ for which any sufficiently large hypergraph with the property that all its linear-size subhyperghraphs have density at least $d$ contains $H$. In particular, they raise the questions of determining the uniform Turán densities of $K_4^{(3)-}$ and $K_4^{(3)}$. The former question was solved only recently in [Israel J. Math. 211 (2016), 349-366] and [J. Eur. Math. Soc. 20 (2018), 1139-1159], while the latter still remains open for almost 40 years. In addition to $K_4^{(3)-}$, the only $3$-uniform hypergraphs whose uniform Turán density is known are those with zero uniform Turán density classified by Reiher, Rödl and Schacht [J. London Math. Soc. 97 (2018), 77-97] and a specific family with uniform Turán density equal to $1/27$. We develop new tools for embedding hypergraphs in host hypergraphs with positive uniform density and apply them to completely determine the uniform Turán density of a fundamental family of $3$-uniform hypergraphs, namely tight cycles $C_\ell^{(3)}$. The uniform Turán density of $C_\ell^{(3)}$, $\ell\ge 5$, is equal to $4/27$ if $\ell$ is not divisible by three, and is equal to zero otherwise. The case $\ell=5$ resolves a problem suggested by Reiher.

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arXiv2021

Turán numbers of sunflowers

A collection of distinct sets is called a sunflower if the intersection of any pair of sets equals the common intersection of all the sets. Sunflowers are fundamental objects in extremal set theory with relations and applications to many other areas of mathematics as well as theoretical computer science. A central problem in the area due to Erdős and Rado from 1960 asks for the minimum number of sets of size $r$ needed to guarantee the existence of a sunflower of a given size. Despite a lot of recent attention including a polymath project and some amazing breakthroughs, even the asymptotic answer remains unknown. We study a related problem first posed by Duke and Erdős in 1977 which requires that in addition the intersection size of the desired sunflower be fixed. This question is perhaps even more natural from a graph theoretic perspective since it asks for the Turán number of a hypergraph made by the sunflower consisting of $k$ edges, each of size $r$ and with common intersection of size $t$. For a fixed size of the sunflower $k$, the order of magnitude of the answer has been determined by Frankl and Füredi. In the 1980's, with certain applications in mind, Chung, Erdős and Graham and Chung and Erdős considered what happens if one allows $k$, the size of the desired sunflower, to grow with the size of the ground set. In the three uniform case $r=3$ the correct dependence on the size of the sunflower has been determined by Duke and Erdős and independently by Frankl and in the four uniform case by Bucić, Draganić, Sudakov and Tran. We resolve this problem for any uniformity, by determining up to a constant factor the $n$-vertex Turán number of a sunflower of arbitrary uniformity $r$, common intersection size $t$ and with the size of the sunflower $k$ allowed to grow with $n$.

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arXiv2021

The (t-1)-chromatic Ramsey number for paths

The following relaxation of the classical problem of determining Ramsey number of a fixed graph has first been proposed by Erdos, Hajnal and Rado over 50 years ago. Given a graph $G$ and an integer $t \geq 2$ determine the minimum number $N$ such that in any $t$-coloured complete graph on $N$ vertices there is a copy of $G$ using only edges of some $t-1$ colours. We determine the answer precisely when $G$ is a path.

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arXiv2021

Counting $H$-free orientations of graphs

In 1974, Erdős posed the following problem. Given an oriented graph $H$, determine or estimate the maximum possible number of $H$-free orientations of an $n$-vertex graph. When $H$ is a tournament, the answer was determined precisely for sufficiently large $n$ by Alon and Yuster. In general, when the underlying undirected graph of $H$ contains a cycle, one can obtain accurate bounds by combining an observation of Kozma and Moran with celebrated results on the number of $F$-free graphs. As the main contribution of the paper, we resolve all remaining cases in an asymptotic sense, thereby giving a rather complete answer to Erdős's question. Moreover, we determine the answer exactly when $H$ is an odd cycle and $n$ is sufficiently large, answering a question of Araújo, Botler and Mota.

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arXiv2021

Cycles of many lengths in Hamiltonian graphs

In 1999, Jacobson and Lehel conjectured that for $k \geq 3$, every $k$-regular Hamiltonian graph has cycles of at least linearly many different lengths. This was further strengthened by Verstraëte, who asked whether the regularity can be replaced with the weaker condition that the minimum degree is at least $3$. Despite attention from various researchers, until now, the best partial result towards both of these conjectures was a $\sqrt{n}$ lower bound on the number of cycle lengths. We resolve these conjectures asymptotically, by showing that the number of cycle lengths is at least $n^{1-o(1)}$.

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arXiv2020

Universal and unavoidable graphs

The Turán number $\text{ex}(n,H)$ of a graph $H$ is the maximal number of edges in an $H$-free graph on $n$ vertices. In $1983$ Chung and Erdős asked which graphs $H$ with $e$ edges minimize $\text{ex}(n,H)$. They resolved this question asymptotically for most of the range of $e$ and asked to complete the picture. In this paper we answer their question by resolving all remaining cases. Our result translates directly to the setting of universality, a well-studied notion of finding graphs which contain every graph belonging to a certain family. In this setting we extend previous work done by Babai, Chung, Erdős, Graham and Spencer, and by Alon and Asodi.

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arXiv2020

The intersection spectrum of 3-chromatic intersecting hypergraphs

For a hypergraph $H$, define its intersection spectrum $I(H)$ as the set of all intersection sizes $|E\cap F|$ of distinct edges $E,F\in E(H)$. In their seminal paper from 1973 which introduced the local lemma, Erdős and Lovász asked: how large must the intersection spectrum of a $k$-uniform $3$-chromatic intersecting hypergraph be? They showed that such a hypergraph must have at least three intersection sizes, and conjectured that the size of the intersection spectrum tends to infinity with $k$. Despite the problem being reiterated several times over the years by Erdős and other researchers, the lower bound of three intersection sizes has remarkably withstood any improvement until now. In this paper, we prove the Erdős-Lovász conjecture in a strong form by showing that there are at least $k^{1/2-o(1)}$ intersection sizes. Our proof consists of a delicate interplay between Ramsey type arguments and a density increment approach.

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arXiv2020

Covering graphs by monochromatic trees and Helly-type results for hypergraphs

How many monochromatic paths, cycles or general trees does one need to cover all vertices of a given $r$-edge-coloured graph $G$? These problems were introduced in the 1960s and were intensively studied by various researchers over the last 50 years. In this paper, we establish a connection between this problem and the following natural Helly-type question in hypergraphs. Roughly speaking, this question asks for the maximum number of vertices needed to cover all the edges of a hypergraph $H$ if it is known that any collection of a few edges of $H$ has a small cover. We obtain quite accurate bounds for the hypergraph problem and use them to give some unexpected answers to several questions about covering graphs by monochromatic trees raised and studied by Bal and DeBiasio, Kohayakawa, Mota and Schacht, Lang and Lo, and Girão, Letzter and Sahasrabudhe.

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arXiv2020

Halfway to Rota's basis conjecture

In 1989, Rota made the following conjecture. Given $n$ bases $B_{1},\dots,B_{n}$ in an $n$-dimensional vector space $V$, one can always find $n$ disjoint bases of $V$, each containing exactly one element from each $B_{i}$ (we call such bases transversal bases). Rota's basis conjecture remains wide open despite its apparent simplicity and the efforts of many researchers (for example, the conjecture was recently the subject of the collaborative "Polymath" project). In this paper we prove that one can always find $\left(1/2-o\left(1\right)\right)n$ disjoint transversal bases, improving on the previous best bound of $Ω\left(n/\log n\right)$. Our results also apply to the more general setting of matroids.

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arXiv2020

2-factors with k cycles in Hamiltonian graphs

A well known generalisation of Dirac's theorem states that if a graph $G$ on $n\ge 4k$ vertices has minimum degree at least $n/2$ then $G$ contains a $2$-factor consisting of exactly $k$ cycles. This is easily seen to be tight in terms of the bound on the minimum degree. However, if one assumes in addition that $G$ is Hamiltonian it has been conjectured that the bound on the minimum degree may be relaxed. This was indeed shown to be true by Sárközy. In subsequent papers, the minimum degree bound has been improved, most recently to $(2/5+\varepsilon)n$ by DeBiasio, Ferrara, and Morris. On the other hand no lower bounds close to this are known, and all papers on this topic ask whether the minimum degree needs to be linear. We answer this question, by showing that the required minimum degree for large Hamiltonian graphs to have a $2$-factor consisting of a fixed number of cycles is sublinear in $n.$

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arXiv2019

Three colour bipartite Ramsey number of cycles and paths

The $k$-colour bipartite Ramsey number of a bipartite graph $H$ is the least integer $n$ for which every $k$-edge-coloured complete bipartite graph $K_{n,n}$ contains a monochromatic copy of $H$. The study of bipartite Ramsey numbers was initiated, over 40 years ago, by Faudree and Schelp and, independently, by Gyárfás and Lehel, who determined the $2$-colour Ramsey number of paths. In this paper we determine asymptotically the $3$-colour bipartite Ramsey number of paths and (even) cycles.

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arXiv2018

On Kahn's basis conjecture

In 1991, Kahn made the following conjecture. For any $n$-dimensional vector space $V$ and any $n\times n$ array of $n^2$ bases of $V$, it is possible to choose a representative vector from each of these bases in such a way that the representatives from each row form a basis and the representatives from each column also form a basis. Rota's basis conjecture can be viewed as a special case of Kahn's conjecture, where for each column, all the bases in that column are the same. Recently the authors showed that in the setting of Rota's basis conjecture it is possible to find suitable representatives in $\left(1/2-o\left(1\right)\right)n$ of the rows. In this companion note we give a slight modification of our arguments which generalises this result to the setting of Kahn's conjecture. Our results also apply to the more general setting of matroids.

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