EPPA for two-graphs and antipodal metric spaces

We prove that the class of finite two-graphs has the extension property for partial automorphisms (EPPA, or Hrushovski property), thereby answering a question of Macpherson. In other words, we show that the class of graphs has the extension property for switching automorphisms. We present a short, self-contained, purely combinatorial proof which also proves EPPA for the class of integer valued antipodal metric spaces of diameter 3, answering a question of Aranda et al. The class of two-graphs is an important new example which behaves differently from all the other known classes with EPPA: Two-graphs do not have the amalgamation property with automorphisms (APA), their Ramsey expansion has to add a graph, it is not known if they have coherent EPPA and even EPPA itself cannot be proved using the Herwig--Lascar theorem.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure

What does a typical metric space look like?

The collection $\mathcal{M}_n$ of all metric spaces on $n$ points whose diameter is at most $2$ can naturally be viewed as a compact convex subset of $\mathbb{R}^{\binom{n}{2}}$, known as the metric polytope. In this paper, we study the metric polytope for large $n$ and show that it is close to the cube $[1,2]^{\binom{n}{2}} \subseteq \mathcal{M}_n$ in the following two senses. First, the volume of the polytope is not much larger than that of the cube, with the following quantitative estimates: $$\left(\tfrac{1}{6}+o(1)\right)n^{3/2} \le \log \mathrm{Vol}(\mathcal{M}_n)\le O(n^{3/2}).$$ Second, when sampling a metric space from $\mathcal{M}_n$ uniformly at random, the minimum distance is at least $1 - n^{-c}$ with high probability, for some $c > 0$. Our proof is based on entropy techniques. We discuss alternative approaches to estimating the volume of $\mathcal{M}_n$ using exchangeability, Szemer\'edi's regularity lemma, the hypergraph container method, and the K\H{o}v\'ari--S\'os--Tur\'an theorem.Comment: 64 pages, 2 figures. v2: Swapped Sections 5 and 6 and added a reader's guid

Proceedings of the 26th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS'09)

The Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS) is held alternately in France and in Germany. The conference of February 26-28, 2009, held in Freiburg, is the 26th in this series. Previous meetings took place in Paris (1984), Saarbr¨ucken (1985), Orsay (1986), Passau (1987), Bordeaux (1988), Paderborn (1989), Rouen (1990), Hamburg (1991), Cachan (1992), W¨urzburg (1993), Caen (1994), M¨unchen (1995), Grenoble (1996), L¨ubeck (1997), Paris (1998), Trier (1999), Lille (2000), Dresden (2001), Antibes (2002), Berlin (2003), Montpellier (2004), Stuttgart (2005), Marseille (2006), Aachen (2007), and Bordeaux (2008). ..