Spotting Trees with Few Leaves

We show two results related to the Hamiltonicity and $k$-Path algorithms in undirected graphs by Bj\"orklund [FOCS'10], and Bj\"orklund et al., [arXiv'10]. First, we demonstrate that the technique used can be generalized to finding some $k$-vertex tree with $l$ leaves in an $n$-vertex undirected graph in $O^*(1.657^k2^{l/2})$ time. It can be applied as a subroutine to solve the $k$-Internal Spanning Tree ($k$-IST) problem in $O^*(\min(3.455^k, 1.946^n))$ time using polynomial space, improving upon previous algorithms for this problem. In particular, for the first time we break the natural barrier of $O^*(2^n)$. Second, we show that the iterated random bipartition employed by the algorithm can be improved whenever the host graph admits a vertex coloring with few colors; it can be an ordinary proper vertex coloring, a fractional vertex coloring, or a vector coloring. In effect, we show improved bounds for $k$-Path and Hamiltonicity in any graph of maximum degree $\Delta=4,\ldots,12$ or with vector chromatic number at most 8

Positional Games

Positional games are a branch of combinatorics, researching a variety of two-player games, ranging from popular recreational games such as Tic-Tac-Toe and Hex, to purely abstract games played on graphs and hypergraphs. It is closely connected to many other combinatorial disciplines such as Ramsey theory, extremal graph and set theory, probabilistic combinatorics, and to computer science. We survey the basic notions of the field, its approaches and tools, as well as numerous recent advances, standing open problems and promising research directions.Comment: Submitted to Proceedings of the ICM 201

Generating random graphs in biased Maker-Breaker games

We present a general approach connecting biased Maker-Breaker games and problems about local resilience in random graphs. We utilize this approach to prove new results and also to derive some known results about biased Maker-Breaker games. In particular, we show that for $b=o\left(\sqrt{n}\right)$, Maker can build a pancyclic graph (that is, a graph that contains cycles of every possible length) while playing a $(1:b)$ game on $E(K_n)$. As another application, we show that for $b=\Theta\left(n/\ln n\right)$, playing a $(1:b)$ game on $E(K_n)$, Maker can build a graph which contains copies of all spanning trees having maximum degree $\Delta=O(1)$ with a bare path of linear length (a bare path in a tree $T$ is a path with all interior vertices of degree exactly two in $T$)

Threshold phenomena in random graphs

In the 1950s, random graphs appeared for the first time in a result of the prolific hungarian mathematician Pál Erd\H{o}s. Since then, interest in random graph theory has only grown up until now. In its first stages, the basis of its theory were set, while they were mainly used in probability and combinatorics theory. However, with the new century and the boom of technologies like the World Wide Web, random graphs are even more important since they are extremely useful to handle problems in fields like network and communication theory. Because of this fact, nowadays random graphs are widely studied by the mathematical community around the world and new promising results have been recently achieved, showing an exciting future for this field. In this bachelor thesis, we focus our study on the threshold phenomena for graph properties within random graphs