An asymptotic bound for the strong chromatic number

The strong chromatic number $\chi_{\text{s}}(G)$ of a graph $G$ on $n$ vertices is the least number $r$ with the following property: after adding $r \lceil n/r \rceil - n$ isolated vertices to $G$ and taking the union with any collection of spanning disjoint copies of $K_r$ in the same vertex set, the resulting graph has a proper vertex-colouring with $r$ colours. We show that for every $c > 0$ and every graph $G$ on $n$ vertices with $\Delta(G) \ge cn$, $\chi_{\text{s}}(G) \leq (2 + o(1)) \Delta(G)$, which is asymptotically best possible.Comment: Minor correction, accepted for publication in Combin. Probab. Compu

On sufficient conditions for Hamiltonicity in dense graphs

We study structural conditions in dense graphs that guarantee the existence of vertex-spanning substructures such as Hamilton cycles. It is easy to see that every Hamiltonian graph is connected, has a perfect fractional matching and, excluding the bipartite case, contains an odd cycle. Our main result in turn states that any large enough graph that robustly satisfies these properties must already be Hamiltonian. Moreover, the same holds for embedding powers of cycles and graphs of sublinear bandwidth subject to natural generalisations of connectivity, matchings and odd cycles. This solves the embedding problem that underlies multiple lines of research on sufficient conditions for Hamiltonicity in dense graphs. As applications, we recover and establish Bandwidth Theorems in a variety of settings including Ore-type degree conditions, P\'osa-type degree conditions, deficiency-type conditions, locally dense and inseparable graphs, multipartite graphs as well as robust expanders

Extremal results in hypergraph theory via the absorption method

The so-called "absorbing method" was first introduced in a systematic way by Rödl, Ruciński and Szemerédi in 2006, and has found many uses ever since. Speaking in a general sense, it is useful for finding spanning substructures of combinatorial structures. We establish various results of different natures, in both graph and hypergraph theory, most of them using the absorbing method: 1. We prove an asymptotically best-possible bound on the strong chromatic number with respect to the maximum degree of the graph. This establishes a weak version of a conjecture of Aharoni, Berger and Ziv. 2. We determine asymptotic minimum codegree thresholds which ensure the existence of tilings with tight cycles (of a given size) in uniform hypergraphs. Moreover, we prove results on coverings with tight cycles. 3. We show that every 2-coloured complete graph on the integers contains a monochromatic infinite path whose vertex set is sufficiently "dense" in the natural numbers. This improves results of Galvin and Erdős and of DeBiasio and McKenney

Density of monochromatic infinite paths

For any subset $A \subseteq \mathbb{N}$, we define its upper density to be $\limsup_{ n \rightarrow \infty } |A \cap \{ 1, \dotsc, n \}| / n$. We prove that every $2$-edge-colouring of the complete graph on $\mathbb{N}$ contains a monochromatic infinite path, whose vertex set has upper density at least $(9 + \sqrt{17})/16 \approx 0.82019$. This improves on results of Erd\H{o}s and Galvin, and of DeBiasio and McKenney.Comment: Accepted for publication in The Electronic Journal of Combinatoric

Covering and tiling hypergraphs with tight cycles

Given $3 \leq k \leq s$, we say that a $k$-uniform hypergraph $C^k_s$ is a tight cycle on $s$ vertices if there is a cyclic ordering of the vertices of $C^k_s$ such that every $k$ consecutive vertices under this ordering form an edge. We prove that if $k \ge 3$ and $s \ge 2k^2$, then every $k$-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices with minimum codegree at least $(1/2 + o(1))n$ has the property that every vertex is covered by a copy of $C^k_s$. Our result is asymptotically best possible for infinitely many pairs of $s$ and $k$, e.g. when $s$ and $k$ are coprime. A perfect $C^k_s$-tiling is a spanning collection of vertex-disjoint copies of $C^k_s$. When $s$ is divisible by $k$, the problem of determining the minimum codegree that guarantees a perfect $C^k_s$-tiling was solved by a result of Mycroft. We prove that if $k \ge 3$ and $s \ge 5k^2$ is not divisible by $k$ and $s$ divides $n$, then every $k$-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices with minimum codegree at least $(1/2 + 1/(2s) + o(1))n$ has a perfect $C^k_s$-tiling. Again our result is asymptotically best possible for infinitely many pairs of $s$ and $k$, e.g. when $s$ and $k$ are coprime with $k$ even.Comment: Revised version, accepted for publication in Combin. Probab. Compu

Dirac-type conditions for spanning bounded-degree hypertrees

We prove that for fixed $k$, every $k$-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices and of minimum codegree at least $n/2+o(n)$ contains every spanning tight $k$-tree of bounded vertex degree as a sub\-graph. This generalises a well-known result of Koml\'os, S\'ark\"ozy and Szemer\'edi for graphs. Our result is asymptotically sharp. We also prove an extension of our result to hypergraphs that satisfy some weak quasirandomness conditions

Towards a hypergraph version of the P\'osa-Seymour conjecture

We prove that for fixed $r\ge k\ge 2$, every $k$-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices having minimum codegree at least $(1-(\binom{r-1}{k-1}+\binom{r-2}{k-2})^{-1})n+o(n)$ contains the $(r-k+1)$th power of a tight Hamilton cycle. This result may be seen as a step towards a hypergraph version of the P\'osa--Seymour conjecture. Moreover, we prove that the same bound on the codegree suffices for finding a copy of every spanning hypergraph of tree-width less than $r$ which admits a tree decomposition where every vertex is in a bounded number of bags.Comment: 22 page

Universal arrays

A word on $q$ symbols is a sequence of letters from a fixed alphabet of size $q$. For an integer $k\ge 1$, we say that a word $w$ is $k$-universal if, given an arbitrary word of length $k$, one can obtain it by removing entries from $w$. It is easily seen that the minimum length of a $k$-universal word on $q$ symbols is exactly $qk$. We prove that almost every word of size $(1+o(1))c_qk$ is $k$-universal with high probability, where $c_q$ is an explicit constant whose value is roughly $q\log q$. Moreover, we show that the $k$-universality property for uniformly chosen words exhibits a sharp threshold. Finally, by extending techniques of Alon [Geometric and Functional Analysis 27 (2017), no. 1, 1--32], we give asymptotically tight bounds for every higher dimensional analogue of this problem.Comment: 12 page