The Constructor-Blocker Game

We study the following game version of generalized graph Tur\'an problems. For two fixed graphs $F$ and $H$, two players, Constructor and Blocker, alternately claim unclaimed edges of the complete graph $K_n$. Constructor can only claim edges so that he never claims all edges of any copy of $F$, i.e.his graph must remain $F$-free, while Blocker can claim unclaimed edges without restrictions. The game ends when Constructor cannot claim further edges or when all edges have been claimed. The score of the game is the number of copies of $H$ with all edges claimed by Constructor. Constructor's aim is to maximize the score, while Blocker tries to keep the score as low as possible. We denote by $g(n,H,F)$ the score of the game when both players play optimally and Constructor starts the game. In this paper, we obtain the exact value of $g(n,H,F)$ when both $F$ and $H$ are stars and when $F=P_4$, $H=P_3$. We determine the asymptotics of $g(n,H,F)$ when $F$ is a star and $H$ is a tree and when $F=P_5$, $H=K_3$, and we derive upper and lower bounds on $g(n,P_4,P_5)$

On the maximum number of odd cycles in graphs without smaller odd cycles

We prove that for each odd integer $k \geq 7$, every graph on $n$ vertices without odd cycles of length less than $k$ contains at most $(n/k)^k$ cycles of length $k$. This generalizes the previous results on the maximum number of pentagons in triangle-free graphs, conjectured by Erd\H{o}s in 1984, and asymptotically determines the generalized Tur\'an number $\mathrm{ex}(n,C_k,C_{k-2})$ for odd $k$. In contrary to the previous results on the pentagon case, our proof is not computer-assisted

High dimensional Hoffman bound and applications in extremal combinatorics

One powerful method for upper-bounding the largest independent set in a graph is the Hoffman bound, which gives an upper bound on the largest independent set of a graph in terms of its eigenvalues. It is easily seen that the Hoffman bound is sharp on the tensor power of a graph whenever it is sharp for the original graph. In this paper, we introduce the related problem of upper-bounding independent sets in tensor powers of hypergraphs. We show that many of the prominent open problems in extremal combinatorics, such as the Tur\'an problem for (hyper-)graphs, can be encoded as special cases of this problem. We also give a new generalization of the Hoffman bound for hypergraphs which is sharp for the tensor power of a hypergraph whenever it is sharp for the original hypergraph. As an application of our Hoffman bound, we make progress on the problem of Frankl on families of sets without extended triangles from 1990. We show that if $\frac{1}{2}n\le2k\le\frac{2}{3}n,$ then the extremal family is the star, i.e. the family of all sets that contains a given element. This covers the entire range in which the star is extremal. As another application, we provide spectral proofs for Mantel's theorem on triangle-free graphs and for Frankl-Tokushige theorem on $k$-wise intersecting families