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Oriol Serra

Publications and source records attributed to Oriol Serra.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

On List k-Coloring Convex Bipartite Graphs

List k-Coloring (Li k-Col) is the decision problem asking if a given graph admits a proper coloring compatible with a given list assignment to its vertices with colors in {1,2,..,k}. The problem is known to be NP-hard even for k=3 within the class of 3-regular planar bipartite graphs and for k=4 within the class of chordal bipartite graphs. In 2015, Huang, Johnson and Paulusma asked for the complexity of Li 3-Col in the class of chordal bipartite graphs. In this paper we give a partial answer to this question by showing that Li k-Col is polynomial in the class of convex bipartite graphs. We show first that biconvex bipartite graphs admit a multichain ordering, extending the classes of graphs where a polynomial algorithm of Enright, Stewart and Tardos (2014) can be applied to the problem. We provide a dynamic programming algorithm to solve the Li k-Col in the calss of convex bipartite graphs. Finally we show how our algorithm can be modified to solve the more general Li H-Col problem on convex bipartite graphs.

cs.CC↗

Entropy versions of additive inequalities

The connection between inequalities in additive combinatorics and analogous versions in terms of the entropy of random variables has been extensively explored over the past few years. This paper extends a device introduced by Ruzsa in his seminal work introducing this correspondence. This extension provides a toolbox for establishing the equivalence between sumset inequalities and their entropic versions. It supplies simpler proofs of known results and opens a path for obtaining new ones.

math.CO↗

Triangulations and a discrete Brunn-Minkowski inequality in the plane

For a set $A$ of points in the plane, not all collinear, we denote by ${\rm tr}(A)$ the number of triangles in any triangulation of $A$; that is, ${\rm tr}(A) = 2i+b-2$ where $b$ and $i$ are the numbers of points of $A$ in the boundary and the interior of $[A]$ (we use $[A]$ to denote "convex hull of $A$"). We conjecture the following analogue of the Brunn-Minkowski inequality: for any two point sets $A,B \subset {\mathbb R}^2$ one has \[ {\rm tr}(A+B)^{\frac12}\geq {\rm tr}(A)^{\frac12}+{\rm tr}(B)^{\frac12}. \] We prove this conjecture in several cases: if $[A]=[B]$, if $B=A\cup\{b\}$, if $|B|=3$, or if none of $A$ or $B$ has interior points.

math.CO↗

Additive Volume of Sets Contained in Few Arithmetic Progressions

A conjecture of Freiman gives an exact formula for the largest volume of a finite set $A$ of integers with given cardinality $k = |A|$ and doubling $T = |2A|$. The formula is known to hold when $T \le 3k-4$, for some small range over $3k-4$ and for families of structured sets called chains. In this paper we extend the formula to sets of every dimension and prove it for sets composed of three segments, giving structural results for the extremal case. A weaker extension to sets composed of a bounded number of segments is also discussed.

math.NT↗

A step beyond Freiman's theorem for set addition modulo a prime

Freiman's 2.4-Theorem states that any set $A \subset \mathbb{Z}_p$ satisfying $|2A| \leq 2.4|A| - 3 $ and $|A| < p/35$ can be covered by an arithmetic progression of length at most $|2A| - |A| + 1$. A more general result of Green and Ruzsa implies that this covering property holds for any set satisfying $|2A| \leq 3|A| - 4$ as long as the rather strong density requirement $|A| < p/10^{215}$ is satisfied. We present a version of this statement that allows for sets satisfying $|2A| \leq 2.48|A| - 7$ with the more modest density requirement of $|A| < p/10^{10}$.

math.CO↗

Revisiting Kneser's Theorem for Field Extensions

A Theorem of Hou, Leung and Xiang generalised Kneser's addition Theorem to field extensions. This theorem was known to be valid only in separable extensions, and it was a conjecture of Hou that it should be valid for all extensions. We give an alternative proof of the theorem that also holds in the non-separable case, thus solving Hou's conjecture. This result is a consequence of a strengthening of Hou et al.'s theorem that is a transposition to extension fields of an addition theorem of Balandraud.

math.NT↗

On a problem by Shapozenko on Johnson graphs

The Johnson graph $J(n,m)$ has the $m$--subsets of $\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$ as vertices and two subsets are adjacent in the graph if they share $m-1$ elements. Shapozenko asked about the isoperimetric function $μ_{n,m}(k)$ of Johnson graphs, that is, the cardinality of the smallest boundary of sets with $k$ vertices in $J(n,m)$ for each $1\le k\le {n\choose m}$. We give an upper bound for $μ_{n,m}(k)$ and show that, for each given $k$ such that the solution to the Shadow Minimization Problem in the Boolean lattice is unique, and each sufficiently large $n$, the given upper bound is tight. We also show that the bound is tight for the small values of $k\le m+1$ and for all values of $k$ when $m=2$.

math.CO↗

An analogue of Vosper's Theorem for Extension Fields

We are interested in characterising pairs $S,T$ of $F$-linear subspaces in a field extension $L/F$ such that the linear span $ST$ of the set of products of elements of $S$ and of elements of $T$ has small dimension. Our central result is a linear analogue of Vosper's Theorem, which gives the structure of vector spaces $S, T$ in a prime extension $L$ of a finite field $F$ for which $\dim_FST =\dim_F S+\dim_F T-1,$ when $\dim_F S, \dim_F T\ge 2$ and $\dim_F ST\le [L:F]-2$.

math.NT↗

Counting configuration-free sets in groups

We provide new examples of the asymptotic counting for the number of subsets on groups of given size which are free of certain configurations. These examples include sets without solutions to equations in non-abelian groups, and linear configurations in abelian groups defined from group homomorphisms. The results are obtained by combining the methodology of hypergraph containers joint with arithmetic removal lemmas. As a consequence, random counterparts are presented as well.

math.CO↗

Correlation among runners and some results on the Lonely Runner Conjecture

The Lonely Runner Conjecture was posed independently by Wills and Cusick and has many applications in different mathematical fields, such as diophantine approximation. This well-known conjecture states that for any set of runners running along the unit circle with constant different speeds and starting at the same point, there is a moment where all of them are far enough from the origin. We study the correlation among the time that runners spend close to the origin. By means of these correlations, we improve a result of Chen on the gap of loneliness and we extend an invisible runner result of Czerwinski and Grytczuk. In the last part, we introduce dynamic interval graphs to deal with a weak version of the conjecture thus providing some new results.

math.CO↗

On sumsets and convex hull

One classical result of Freimann gives the optimal lower bound for the cardinality of A+A if A is a d-dimensional finite set in the Euclidean d-space. Matolcsi and Ruzsa have recently generalized this lower bound to |A+kB| if B is d-dimensional, and A is contained in the convex hull of B. We characterize the equality case of the Matolcsi-Ruzsa bound. The argument is based partially on understanding triangulations of polytopes.

math.CO↗

Random subgraphs make identification affordable

An identifying code of a graph is a dominating set which uniquely determines all the vertices by their neighborhood within the code. Whereas graphs with large minimum degree have small domination number, this is not the case for the identifying code number (the size of a smallest identifying code), which indeed is not even a monotone parameter with respect to graph inclusion. We show that every graph $G$ with $n$ vertices, maximum degree $Δ=ω(1)$ and minimum degree $δ\geq c\logΔ$, for some constant $c>0$, contains a large spanning subgraph which admits an identifying code with size $O\left(\frac{n\logΔ}δ\right)$. In particular, if $δ=Θ(n)$, then $G$ has a dense spanning subgraph with identifying code $O\left(\log n\right)$, namely, of asymptotically optimal size. The subgraph we build is created using a probabilistic approach, and we use an interplay of various random methods to analyze it. Moreover we show that the result is essentially best possible, both in terms of the number of deleted edges and the size of the identifying code.

math.CO↗

On the Removal Lemma for Linear Systems over Abelian Groups

In this paper we present an extension of the removal lemma to integer linear systems over abelian groups. We prove that, if the $k$--determinantal of an integer $(k\times m)$ matrix $A$ is coprime with the order $n$ of a group $G$ and the number of solutions of the system $Ax=b$ with $x_1\in X_1,..., x_m\in X_m$ is $o(n^{m-k})$, then we can eliminate $o(n)$ elements in each set to remove all these solutions. This is a follow-up of our former paper 'A Removal Lemma for Systems of Linear Equations over Finite Fields' arXiv:0809.1846v1, which dealt with the case of finite fields.

math.CO↗

On the number of monochromatic solutions of integer linear systems on Abelian groups

Let $G$ be a finite abelian group with exponent $n$, and let $r$ be a positive integer. Let $A$ be a $k\times m$ matrix with integer entries. We show that if $A$ satisfies some natural conditions and $|G|$ is large enough then, for each $r$--coloring of $G\setminus \{0\}$, there is $δ$ depending only on $r,n$ and $m$ such that the homogeneous linear system $Ax=0$ has at least $δ|G|^{m-k}$ monochromatic solutions. Density versions of this counting result are also addressed.

math.CO↗

A Structure Theorem for Small Sumsets in Nonabelian Groups

Let G be an arbitrary finite group and let S and T be two subsets such that |S|>1, |T|>1, and |TS|< |T|+|S|< |G|-1. We show that if |S|< |G|-4|G|^{1/2}+1 then either S is a geometric progression or there exists a non-trivial subgroup H such that either |HS|< |S|+|H| or |SH| < |S|+|H|. This extends to the nonabelian case classical results for Abelian groups. When we remove the hypothesis |S|<|G|-4|G|^{1/2}+1 we show the existence of counterexamples to the above characterization whose structure is described precisely.

math.CO↗

On the tree-depth of Random Graphs

The tree-depth is a parameter introduced under several names as a measure of sparsity of a graph. We compute asymptotic values of the tree-depth of random graphs. For dense graphs, p>> 1/n, the tree-depth of a random graph G is a.a.s. td(G)=n-O(sqrt(n/p)). Random graphs with p=c/n, have a.a.s. linear tree-depth when c>1, the tree-depth is Theta (log n) when c=1 and Theta (loglog n) for c<1. The result for c>1 is derived from the computation of tree-width and provides a more direct proof of a conjecture by Gao on the linearity of tree-width recently proved by Lee, Lee and Oum. We also show that, for c=1, every width parameter is a.a.s. constant, and that random regular graphs have linear tree-depth.

math.CO↗

Rainbow Matchings: existence and counting

A perfect matching M in an edge-colored complete bipartite graph K_{n,n} is rainbow if no pair of edges in M have the same color. We obtain asymptotic enumeration results for the number of rainbow matchings in terms of the maximum number of occurrences of a color. We also consider two natural models of random edge-colored K_{n,n} and show that, if the number of colors is at least n, then there is with high probability a random matching. This in particular shows that almost every square matrix of order n in which every entry appears at most n times has a Latin transversal.

math.CO↗