777 research outputs found
Toric algebra of hypergraphs
The edges of any hypergraph parametrize a monomial algebra called the edge
subring of the hypergraph. We study presentation ideals of these edge subrings,
and describe their generators in terms of balanced walks on hypergraphs. Our
results generalize those for the defining ideals of edge subrings of graphs,
which are well-known in the commutative algebra community, and popular in the
algebraic statistics community. One of the motivations for studying toric
ideals of hypergraphs comes from algebraic statistics, where generators of the
toric ideal give a basis for random walks on fibers of the statistical model
specified by the hypergraph. Further, understanding the structure of the
generators gives insight into the model geometry.Comment: Section 3 is new: it explains connections to log-linear models in
algebraic statistics and to combinatorial discrepancy. Section 6 (open
problems) has been moderately revise
Matchings in 3-uniform hypergraphs
We determine the minimum vertex degree that ensures a perfect matching in a
3-uniform hypergraph. More precisely, suppose that H is a sufficiently large
3-uniform hypergraph whose order n is divisible by 3. If the minimum vertex
degree of H is greater than \binom{n-1}{2}-\binom{2n/3}{2}, then H contains a
perfect matching. This bound is tight and answers a question of Han, Person and
Schacht. More generally, we show that H contains a matching of size d\le n/3 if
its minimum vertex degree is greater than \binom{n-1}{2}-\binom{n-d}{2}, which
is also best possible. This extends a result of Bollobas, Daykin and Erdos.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figure. To appear in JCT
A Geometric Theory for Hypergraph Matching
We develop a theory for the existence of perfect matchings in hypergraphs
under quite general conditions. Informally speaking, the obstructions to
perfect matchings are geometric, and are of two distinct types: 'space
barriers' from convex geometry, and 'divisibility barriers' from arithmetic
lattice-based constructions. To formulate precise results, we introduce the
setting of simplicial complexes with minimum degree sequences, which is a
generalisation of the usual minimum degree condition. We determine the
essentially best possible minimum degree sequence for finding an almost perfect
matching. Furthermore, our main result establishes the stability property:
under the same degree assumption, if there is no perfect matching then there
must be a space or divisibility barrier. This allows the use of the stability
method in proving exact results. Besides recovering previous results, we apply
our theory to the solution of two open problems on hypergraph packings: the
minimum degree threshold for packing tetrahedra in 3-graphs, and Fischer's
conjecture on a multipartite form of the Hajnal-Szemer\'edi Theorem. Here we
prove the exact result for tetrahedra and the asymptotic result for Fischer's
conjecture; since the exact result for the latter is technical we defer it to a
subsequent paper.Comment: Accepted for publication in Memoirs of the American Mathematical
Society. 101 pages. v2: minor changes including some additional diagrams and
passages of expository tex
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