A family of extremal hypergraphs for Ryser's conjecture

Ryser's Conjecture states that for any $r$-partite $r$-uniform hypergraph, the vertex cover number is at most $r{-}1$ times the matching number. This conjecture is only known to be true for $r\leq 3$ in general and for $r\leq 5$ if the hypergraph is intersecting. There has also been considerable effort made for finding hypergraphs that are extremal for Ryser's Conjecture, i.e. $r$-partite hypergraphs whose cover number is $r-1$ times its matching number. Aside from a few sporadic examples, the set of uniformities $r$ for which Ryser's Conjecture is known to be tight is limited to those integers for which a projective plane of order $r-1$ exists. We produce a new infinite family of $r$-uniform hypergraphs extremal to Ryser's Conjecture, which exists whenever a projective plane of order $r-2$ exists. Our construction is flexible enough to produce a large number of non-isomorphic extremal hypergraphs. In particular, we define what we call the {\em Ryser poset} of extremal intersecting $r$-partite $r$-uniform hypergraphs and show that the number of maximal and minimal elements is exponential in $\sqrt{r}$. This provides further evidence for the difficulty of Ryser's Conjecture

A family of extremal hypergraphs for Ryser's conjecture

Ryser's Conjecture states that for any r-partite r-uniform hypergraph, the vertex cover number is at most r−1 times the matching number. This conjecture is only known to be true for r≤3 in general and for r≤5 if the hypergraph is intersecting. There has also been considerable effort made for finding hypergraphs that are extremal for Ryser's Conjecture, i.e. r-partite hypergraphs whose cover number is r−1 times its matching number. Aside from a few sporadic examples, the set of uniformities r for which Ryser's Conjecture is known to be tight is limited to those integers for which a projective plane of order r−1 exists. We produce a new infinite family of r-uniform hypergraphs extremal to Ryser's Conjecture, which exists whenever a projective plane of order r−2 exists. Our construction is flexible enough to produce a large number of non-isomorphic extremal hypergraphs. In particular, we define what we call the Ryser poset of extremal intersecting r-partite r-uniform hypergraphs and show that the number of maximal and minimal elements is exponential in r. This provides further evidence for the difficulty of Ryser's Conjecture

Intersecting extremal constructions in Ryser's Conjecture for r-partite hypergraphs

Ryser's Conjecture states that for any r-partite r-uniform hypergraph the vertex cover number is at most r−1 times the matching number. This conjecture is only known to be true for r≤3. For intersecting hypergraphs, Ryser's Conjecture reduces to saying that the edges of every r-partite intersecting hypergraph can be covered by r−1 vertices. This special case of the conjecture has only been proven for r≤5. It is interesting to study hypergraphs which are extremal in Ryser's Conjecture i.e, those hypergraphs for which the vertex cover number is exactly r−1 times the matching number. There are very few known constructions of such graphs. For large r the only known constructions come from projective planes and exist only when r−1 is a prime power. Mansour, Song and Yuster studied how few edges a hypergraph which is extremal for Ryser's Conjecture can have. They defined f(r) as the minimum integer so that there exist an r-partite intersecting hypergraph H with τ(H)=r−1 and with f(r) edges. They showed that f(3)=3,f(4)=6, f(5)=9, and 12≤f(6)≤15. In this paper we focus on the cases when r=6 and 7. We show that f(6)=13 improving previous bounds. We also show that f(7)≤22, giving the first known extremal hypergraphs for the r=7 case of Ryser's Conjecture. These results have been obtained independently by Aharoni, Barat, and Wanless

On the Nonuniform Fisher Inequality

AbstractLet F be a family of m subsets (lines) of a set of n elements (points). Suppose that each pair of lines has λ points in common for some positive λ. The Nonuniform Fisher Inequality asserts that under these circumstances m ⩽ n. We examine the case when m = n. We give a short proof of the fact that (with the exception of a trivial case) such an F must behave like a geometry in the following sense: a line must pass through each pair of points. This generalizes a result of de Bruijn and Erdös

Matchings and Covers in Hypergraphs

In this thesis, we study three variations of matching and covering problems in hypergraphs. The first is motivated by an old conjecture of Ryser which says that if \mcH is an $r$-uniform, $r$-partite hypergraph which does not have a matching of size at least $\nu +1$, then \mcH has a vertex cover of size at most $(r-1)\nu$. In particular, we examine the extremal hypergraphs for the $r=3$ case of Ryser's conjecture. In 2014, Haxell, Narins, and Szab{\'{o}} characterized these $3$-uniform, tripartite hypergraphs. Their work relies heavily on topological arguments and seems difficult to generalize. We reprove their characterization and significantly reduce the topological dependencies. Our proof starts by using topology to show that every $3$-uniform, tripartite hypergraph has two matchings which interact with each other in a very restricted way. However, the remainder of the proof uses only elementary methods to show how the extremal hypergraphs are built around these two matchings. Our second motivational pillar is Tuza's conjecture from 1984. For graphs $G$ and $H$, let $\nu_{H}(G)$ denote the size of a maximum collection of pairwise edge-disjoint copies of $H$ in $G$ and let $\tau_{H}(G)$ denote the minimum size of a set of edges which meets every copy of $H$ in $G$. The conjecture is relevant to the case where $H=K_{3}$ and says that $\tau_{\triangledown}(G) \leq 2\nu_{\triangledown}(G)$ for every graph $G$. In 1998, Haxell and Kohayakawa proved that if $G$ is a tripartite graph, then $\tau_{\triangledown}(G) \leq 1.956\nu_{\triangledown}(G)$. We use similar techniques plus a topological result to show that $\tau_{\triangledown}(G) \leq 1.87\nu_{\triangledown}(G)$ for all tripartite graphs $G$. We also examine a special subclass of tripartite graphs and use a simple network flow argument to prove that $\tau_{\triangledown}(H) = \nu_{\triangledown}(H)$ for all such graphs $H$. We then look at the problem of packing and covering edge-disjoint $K_{4}$'s. Yuster proved that if a graph $G$ does not have a fractional packing of $K_{4}$'s of size bigger than $\nu_{\boxtimes}^{*}(G)$, then $\tau_{\boxtimes}(G) \leq 4\nu_{\boxtimes}^{*}(G)$. We give a complementary result to Yuster's for $K_{4}$'s: We show that every graph $G$ has a fractional cover of $K_{4}$'s of size at most $\frac{9}{2}\nu_{\boxtimes}(G)$. We also provide upper bounds on $\tau_{\boxtimes}$ for several classes of graphs. Our final topic is a discussion of fractional stable matchings. Tan proved that every graph has a $\frac{1}{2}$-integral stable matching. We consider hypergraphs. There is a natural notion of fractional stable matching for hypergraphs, and we may ask whether an analogous result exists for this setting. We show this is not the case: Using a construction of Chung, F{\"{u}}redi, Garey, and Graham, we prove that, for all n \in \mbN, there is a $3$-uniform hypergraph with preferences with a fractional stable matching that is unique and has denominators of size at least $n$

Extremal hypergraphs for Ryser's conjecture

Non UBCUnreviewedAuthor affiliation: University of WaterlooFacult