Almost-Fisher families

A classic theorem in combinatorial design theory is Fisher's inequality, which states that a family $\mathcal F$ of subsets of $[n]$ with all pairwise intersections of size $\lambda$ can have at most $n$ non-empty sets. One may weaken the condition by requiring that for every set in $\mathcal F$, all but at most $k$ of its pairwise intersections have size $\lambda$. We call such families $k$-almost $\lambda$-Fisher. Vu was the first to study the maximum size of such families, proving that for $k=1$ the largest family has $2n-2$ sets, and characterising when equality is attained. We substantially refine his result, showing how the size of the maximum family depends on $\lambda$. In particular we prove that for small $\lambda$ one essentially recovers Fisher's bound. We also solve the next open case of $k=2$ and obtain the first non-trivial upper bound for general $k$.Comment: 27 pages (incluiding one appendix

Short proofs of three results about intersecting systems

In this note, we give short proofs of three theorems about intersection problems. The first one is a determination of the maximum size of a nontrivial $k$-uniform, $d$-wise intersecting family for $n\ge \left(1+\frac{d}{2}\right)(k-d+2)$, which improves upon a recent result of O'Neill and Verstra\"{e}te. Our proof also extends to $d$-wise, $t$-intersecting families, and from this result we obtain a version of the Erd\H{o}s-Ko-Rado theorem for $d$-wise, $t$-intersecting families. The second result partially proves a conjecture of Frankl and Tokushige about $k$-uniform families with restricted pairwise intersection sizes. The third result concerns graph intersections. Answering a question of Ellis, we construct $K_{s, t}$-intersecting families of graphs which have size larger than the Erd\H{o}s-Ko-Rado-type construction whenever $t$ is sufficiently large in terms of $s$.Comment: 12 pages; we added a new result, Theorem 1

Coloring non-crossing strings

For a family of geometric objects in the plane $\mathcal{F}=\{S_1,\ldots,S_n\}$, define $\chi(\mathcal{F})$ as the least integer $\ell$ such that the elements of $\mathcal{F}$ can be colored with $\ell$ colors, in such a way that any two intersecting objects have distinct colors. When $\mathcal{F}$ is a set of pseudo-disks that may only intersect on their boundaries, and such that any point of the plane is contained in at most $k$ pseudo-disks, it can be proven that $\chi(\mathcal{F})\le 3k/2 + o(k)$ since the problem is equivalent to cyclic coloring of plane graphs. In this paper, we study the same problem when pseudo-disks are replaced by a family $\mathcal{F}$ of pseudo-segments (a.k.a. strings) that do not cross. In other words, any two strings of $\mathcal{F}$ are only allowed to "touch" each other. Such a family is said to be $k$-touching if no point of the plane is contained in more than $k$ elements of $\mathcal{F}$. We give bounds on $\chi(\mathcal{F})$ as a function of $k$, and in particular we show that $k$-touching segments can be colored with $k+5$ colors. This partially answers a question of Hlin\v{e}n\'y (1998) on the chromatic number of contact systems of strings.Comment: 19 pages. A preliminary version of this work appeared in the proceedings of EuroComb'09 under the title "Coloring a set of touching strings

Sperner systems with restricted differences

Let $\mathcal{F}$ be a family of subsets of $[n]$ and $L$ be a subset of $[n]$. We say $\mathcal{F}$ is an $L$-differencing Sperner system if $|A\setminus B|\in L$ for any distinct $A,B\in\mathcal{F}$. Let $p$ be a prime and $q$ be a power of $p$. Frankl first studied $p$-modular $L$-differencing Sperner systems and showed an upper bound of the form $\sum_{i=0}^{|L|}\binom{n}{i}$. In this paper, we obtain new upper bounds on $q$-modular $L$-differencing Sperner systems using elementary $p$-adic analysis and polynomial method, extending and improving existing results substantially. Moreover, our techniques can be used to derive new upper bounds on subsets of the hypercube with restricted Hamming distances. One highlight of the paper is the first analogue of the celebrated Snevily's theorem in the $q$-modular setting, which results in several new upper bounds on $q$-modular $L$-avoiding $L$-intersecting systems. In particular, we improve a result of Felszeghy, Heged\H{u}s, and R\'{o}nyai, and give a partial answer to a question posed by Babai, Frankl, Kutin, and \v{S}tefankovi\v{c}.Comment: 22 pages, results in table 1 and section 6.1 improve

Newton polygons and curve gonalities

We give a combinatorial upper bound for the gonality of a curve that is defined by a bivariate Laurent polynomial with given Newton polygon. We conjecture that this bound is generically attained, and provide proofs in a considerable number of special cases. One proof technique uses recent work of M. Baker on linear systems on graphs, by means of which we reduce our conjecture to a purely combinatorial statement.Comment: 29 pages, 18 figures; erratum at the end of the articl