Limits of Order Types

The notion of limits of dense graphs was invented, among other reasons, to attack problems in extremal graph theory. It is straightforward to define limits of order types in analogy with limits of graphs, and this paper examines how to adapt to this setting two approaches developed to study limits of dense graphs. We first consider flag algebras, which were used to open various questions on graphs to mechanical solving via semidefinite programming. We define flag algebras of order types, and use them to obtain, via the semidefinite method, new lower bounds on the density of 5- or 6-tuples in convex position in arbitrary point sets, as well as some inequalities expressing the difficulty of sampling order types uniformly. We next consider graphons, a representation of limits of dense graphs that enable their study by continuous probabilistic or analytic methods. We investigate how planar measures fare as a candidate analogue of graphons for limits of order types. We show that the map sending a measure to its associated limit is continuous and, if restricted to uniform measures on compact convex sets, a homeomorphism. We prove, however, that this map is not surjective. Finally, we examine a limit of order types similar to classical constructions in combinatorial geometry (Erdos-Szekeres, Horton...) and show that it cannot be represented by any somewhere regular measure; we analyze this example via an analogue of Sylvester\u27s problem on the probability that k random points are in convex position

Compactness and finite forcibility of graphons

Graphons are analytic objects associated with convergent sequences of graphs. Problems from extremal combinatorics and theoretical computer science led to a study of graphons determined by finitely many subgraph densities, which are referred to as finitely forcible. Following the intuition that such graphons should have finitary structure, Lovasz and Szegedy conjectured that the topological space of typical vertices of a finitely forcible graphon is always compact. We disprove the conjecture by constructing a finitely forcible graphon such that the associated space is not compact. The construction method gives a general framework for constructing finitely forcible graphons with non-trivial properties

Decomposing graphs into edges and triangles

We prove the following 30 year-old conjecture of Győri and Tuza: the edges of every n-vertex graph G can be decomposed into complete graphs C1,. . .,Cℓ of orders two and three such that |C1|+···+|Cℓ| ≤ (1/2+o(1))n2. This result implies the asymptotic version of the old result of Erdős, Goodman and Pósa that asserts the existence of such a decomposition with ℓ ≤ n2/4

Inducibility of directed paths

A long standing open problem in extremal graph theory is to describe all graphs that maximize the number of induced copies of a path on four vertices. The character of the problem changes in the setting of oriented graphs, and becomes more tractable. Here we resolve this problem in the setting of oriented graphs without transitive triangles

Semidefinite Programming and Ramsey Numbers

We use the theory of flag algebras to find new upper bounds for several small graph and hypergraph Ramsey numbers. In particular, we prove the exact values R(K−, K−, K−) = 28, R(K8, C5) = 29, R(K9, C6) = 41, R(Q3, Q3) = 13, R(K3,5, K1,6) = 17, R(C3, C5, C5) = 17, and R(K−, K−; 3) = 12, and in addition improve many additional upper bounds