28 research outputs found
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 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 -wise intersecting families
Problems in extremal graph theory
We consider a variety of problems in extremal graph and set theory.
The {\em chromatic number} of , , is the smallest integer
such that is -colorable.
The {\it square} of , written , is the supergraph of in which also
vertices within distance 2 of each other in are adjacent.
A graph is a {\it minor} of if
can be obtained from a subgraph of by contracting edges.
We show that the upper bound for
conjectured by Wegner (1977) for planar graphs
holds when is a -minor-free graph.
We also show that is equal to the bound
only when contains a complete graph of that order.
One of the central problems of extremal hypergraph theory is
finding the maximum number of edges in a hypergraph
that does not contain a specific forbidden structure.
We consider as a forbidden structure a fixed number of members
that have empty common intersection
as well as small union.
We obtain a sharp upper bound on the size of uniform hypergraphs
that do not contain this structure,
when the number of vertices is sufficiently large.
Our result is strong enough to imply the same sharp upper bound
for several other interesting forbidden structures
such as the so-called strong simplices and clusters.
The {\em -dimensional hypercube}, ,
is the graph whose vertex set is and
whose edge set consists of the vertex pairs
differing in exactly one coordinate.
The generalized Tur\'an problem asks for the maximum number
of edges in a subgraph of a graph that does not contain
a forbidden subgraph .
We consider the Tur\'an problem where is and
is a cycle of length with .
Confirming a conjecture of Erd{\H o}s (1984),
we show that the ratio of the size of such a subgraph of
over the number of edges of is ,
i.e. in the limit this ratio approaches 0
as approaches infinity
Vector sum-intersection theorems
We introduce the following generalization of set intersection via
characteristic vectors: for a family of vectors is said to be \emph{-sum -intersecting} if
for any distinct there exist at least
coordinates, where the entries of and sum up to
at least , i.e.\ .
The original set intersection corresponds to the case .
We address analogs of several variants of classical results in this setting:
the Erd\H{o}s--Ko--Rado theorem and the theorem of Bollob\'as on intersecting
set pairs
Topics in Graph Theory: Extremal Intersecting Systems, Perfect Graphs, and Bireflexive Graphs
In this thesis we investigate three different aspects of graph theory.
Firstly, we consider interesecting systems of independent sets in graphs, and the extension of the classical theorem of Erdos, Ko and Rado to graphs.
Our main results are a proof of an Erdos-Ko-Rado type theorem for a class of trees, and a class of trees which form counterexamples to a conjecture of Hurlberg and Kamat, in such a way that extends the previous counterexamples given by Baber.
Secondly, we investigate perfect graphs - specifically, edge modification aspects of perfect graphs and their subclasses. We give some alternative characterisations of perfect graphs in terms of edge modification, as well as considering the possible connection of the critically perfect graphs - previously studied by Wagler - to the Strong Perfect Graph Theorem. We prove that the situation where critically perfect graphs arise has no analogue in seven different subclasses of perfect graphs (e.g. chordal, comparability graphs), and consider the connectivity of a bipartite reconfiguration-type graph associated to each of these subclasses.
Thirdly, we consider a graph theoretic structure called a bireflexive graph where every vertex is both adjacent and nonadjacent to itself, and use this to characterise modular decompositions as the surjective homomorphisms of these structures. We examine some analogues of some graph theoretic notions and define a “dual” version of the reconstruction conjecture