Maximum number of triangle-free edge colourings with five and six colours

Let k ≥ 3 and r ≥ 2 be natural numbers. For a graph G, let F(G, k, r) denote the number of colourings of the edges of G with colours 1,…, r such that, for every colour c ∈ {1,…, r}, the edges of colour c contain no complete graph on k vertices Kk. Let F(n, k, r) denote the maximum of F(G, k, r) over all graphs G on n vertices. The problem of determining F(n, k, r) was first proposed by Erdős and Rothschild in 1974, and has so far been solved only for r = 2; 3, and a small number of other cases. In this paper we consider the question for the cases k = 3 and r = 5 or r = 6. We almost exactly determine the value F(n, 3, 6) and approximately determine the value F(n, 3, 5) for large values of n. We also characterise all extremal graphs for r = 6 and prove a stability result for r = 5

The Erd\H{o}s-Rothschild problem on edge-colourings with forbidden monochromatic cliques

Let $\mathbf{k} := (k_1,\dots,k_s)$ be a sequence of natural numbers. For a graph $G$, let $F(G;\mathbf{k})$ denote the number of colourings of the edges of $G$ with colours $1,\dots,s$ such that, for every $c \in \{1,\dots,s\}$, the edges of colour $c$ contain no clique of order $k_c$. Write $F(n;\mathbf{k})$ to denote the maximum of $F(G;\mathbf{k})$ over all graphs $G$ on $n$ vertices. This problem was first considered by Erd\H{o}s and Rothschild in 1974, but it has been solved only for a very small number of non-trivial cases. We prove that, for every $\mathbf{k}$ and $n$, there is a complete multipartite graph $G$ on $n$ vertices with $F(G;\mathbf{k}) = F(n;\mathbf{k})$. Also, for every $\mathbf{k}$ we construct a finite optimisation problem whose maximum is equal to the limit of $\log_2 F(n;\mathbf{k})/{n\choose 2}$ as $n$ tends to infinity. Our final result is a stability theorem for complete multipartite graphs $G$, describing the asymptotic structure of such $G$ with $F(G;\mathbf{k}) = F(n;\mathbf{k}) \cdot 2^{o(n^2)}$ in terms of solutions to the optimisation problem.Comment: 16 pages, to appear in Math. Proc. Cambridge Phil. So

Integer colorings with forbidden rainbow sums

For a set of positive integers $A \subseteq [n]$, an $r$-coloring of $A$ is rainbow sum-free if it contains no rainbow Schur triple. In this paper we initiate the study of the rainbow Erd\H{o}s-Rothchild problem in the context of sum-free sets, which asks for the subsets of $[n]$ with the maximum number of rainbow sum-free $r$-colorings. We show that for $r=3$, the interval $[n]$ is optimal, while for $r\geq8$, the set $[\lfloor n/2 \rfloor, n]$ is optimal. We also prove a stability theorem for $r\geq4$. The proofs rely on the hypergraph container method, and some ad-hoc stability analysis.Comment: 20 page

On two problems in Ramsey-Tur\'an theory

Alon, Balogh, Keevash and Sudakov proved that the $(k-1)$-partite Tur\'an graph maximizes the number of distinct $r$-edge-colorings with no monochromatic $K_k$ for all fixed $k$ and $r=2,3$, among all $n$-vertex graphs. In this paper, we determine this function asymptotically for $r=2$ among $n$-vertex graphs with sub-linear independence number. Somewhat surprisingly, unlike Alon-Balogh-Keevash-Sudakov's result, the extremal construction from Ramsey-Tur\'an theory, as a natural candidate, does not maximize the number of distinct edge-colorings with no monochromatic cliques among all graphs with sub-linear independence number, even in the 2-colored case. In the second problem, we determine the maximum number of triangles asymptotically in an $n$-vertex $K_k$-free graph $G$ with $\alpha(G)=o(n)$. The extremal graphs have similar structure to the extremal graphs for the classical Ramsey-Tur\'an problem, i.e.~when the number of edges is maximized.Comment: 22 page

Colouring set families without monochromatic k-chains

A coloured version of classic extremal problems dates back to Erd\H{o}s and Rothschild, who in 1974 asked which $n$-vertex graph has the maximum number of 2-edge-colourings without monochromatic triangles. They conjectured that the answer is simply given by the largest triangle-free graph. Since then, this new class of coloured extremal problems has been extensively studied by various researchers. In this paper we pursue the Erd\H{o}s--Rothschild versions of Sperner's Theorem, the classic result in extremal set theory on the size of the largest antichain in the Boolean lattice, and Erd\H{o}s' extension to $k$-chain-free families. Given a family $\mathcal{F}$ of subsets of $[n]$, we define an $(r,k)$-colouring of $\mathcal{F}$ to be an $r$-colouring of the sets without any monochromatic $k$-chains $F_1 \subset F_2 \subset \dots \subset F_k$. We prove that for $n$ sufficiently large in terms of $k$, the largest $k$-chain-free families also maximise the number of $(2,k)$-colourings. We also show that the middle level, $\binom{[n]}{\lfloor n/2 \rfloor}$, maximises the number of $(3,2)$-colourings, and give asymptotic results on the maximum possible number of $(r,k)$-colourings whenever $r(k-1)$ is divisible by three.Comment: 30 pages, final versio