Rainbow saturation and graph capacities

The $t$-colored rainbow saturation number $rsat_t(n,F)$ is the minimum size of a $t$-edge-colored graph on $n$ vertices that contains no rainbow copy of $F$, but the addition of any missing edge in any color creates such a rainbow copy. Barrus, Ferrara, Vandenbussche and Wenger conjectured that $rsat_t(n,K_s) = \Theta(n\log n)$ for every $s\ge 3$ and $t\ge \binom{s}{2}$. In this short note we prove the conjecture in a strong sense, asymptotically determining the rainbow saturation number for triangles. Our lower bound is probabilistic in spirit, the upper bound is based on the Shannon capacity of a certain family of cliques.Comment: 5 pages, minor change

Covering graphs by monochromatic trees and Helly-type results for hypergraphs

How many monochromatic paths, cycles or general trees does one need to cover all vertices of a given $r$-edge-coloured graph $G$? These problems were introduced in the 1960s and were intensively studied by various researchers over the last 50 years. In this paper, we establish a connection between this problem and the following natural Helly-type question in hypergraphs. Roughly speaking, this question asks for the maximum number of vertices needed to cover all the edges of a hypergraph $H$ if it is known that any collection of a few edges of $H$ has a small cover. We obtain quite accurate bounds for the hypergraph problem and use them to give some unexpected answers to several questions about covering graphs by monochromatic trees raised and studied by Bal and DeBiasio, Kohayakawa, Mota and Schacht, Lang and Lo, and Gir\~ao, Letzter and Sahasrabudhe.Comment: 20 pages including references plus 2 pages of an Appendi

Minimum degree conditions for monochromatic cycle partitioning

A classical result of Erd\H{o}s, Gy\'arf\'as and Pyber states that any $r$-edge-coloured complete graph has a partition into $O(r^2 \log r)$ monochromatic cycles. Here we determine the minimum degree threshold for this property. More precisely, we show that there exists a constant $c$ such that any $r$-edge-coloured graph on $n$ vertices with minimum degree at least $n/2 + c \cdot r \log n$ has a partition into $O(r^2)$ monochromatic cycles. We also provide constructions showing that the minimum degree condition and the number of cycles are essentially tight.Comment: 22 pages (26 including appendix

Separating path systems

We study separating systems of the edges of a graph where each member of the separating system is a path. We conjecture that every $n$-vertex graph admits a separating path system of size $O(n)$ and prove this in certain interesting special cases. In particular, we establish this conjecture for random graphs and graphs with linear minimum degree. We also obtain tight bounds on the size of a minimal separating path system in the case of trees.Comment: 21 pages, fixed misprints, Journal of Combinatoric

Monochromatic cycle covers in random graphs

A classic result of Erd\H{o}s, Gy\'arf\'as and Pyber states that for every coloring of the edges of $K_n$ with $r$ colors, there is a cover of its vertex set by at most $f(r) = O(r^2 \log r)$ vertex-disjoint monochromatic cycles. In particular, the minimum number of such covering cycles does not depend on the size of $K_n$ but only on the number of colors. We initiate the study of this phenomena in the case where $K_n$ is replaced by the random graph $\mathcal G(n,p)$. Given a fixed integer $r$ and $p =p(n) \ge n^{-1/r + \varepsilon}$, we show that with high probability the random graph $G \sim \mathcal G(n,p)$ has the property that for every $r$-coloring of the edges of $G$, there is a collection of $f'(r) = O(r^8 \log r)$ monochromatic cycles covering all the vertices of $G$. Our bound on $p$ is close to optimal in the following sense: if $p\ll (\log n/n)^{1/r}$, then with high probability there are colorings of $G\sim\mathcal G(n,p)$ such that the number of monochromatic cycles needed to cover all vertices of $G$ grows with $n$.Comment: 24 pages, 1 figure (minor changes, added figure