Search

Let $\epsilon_{1},\ldots,\epsilon_{n}$ be a sequence of independent Rademacher random variables. We prove that there is a constant $c>0$ such that for any unit vectors $v_1,\ldots,v_n\in \mathbb{R}^2$, $$\Pr\left[||\epsilon_1 v_1+\ldots+\epsilon_n v_n||_2 \leq \sqrt{2}\right]\geq \frac{c}{n}.$$ This resolves the only remaining conjecture from the seminal paper of Erd\H{o}s on the Littlewood--Offord problem, and it is sharp both in the sense that the constant $\sqrt{2}$ cannot be reduced and that the magnitude $n^{-1}$ is best possible. We also prove polynomial bounds for the analogous problem in higher dimensions., Comment: 17 pages; corrected some errors in our open problems

We study several basic problems about colouring the $p$-random subgraph $G_p$ of an arbitrary graph $G$, focusing primarily on the chromatic number and colouring number of $G_p$. In particular, we show that there exist infinitely many $k$-regular graphs $G$ for which the colouring number (i.e., degeneracy) of $G_{1/2}$ is at most $k/3 + o(k)$ with high probability, thus disproving the natural prediction that such random graphs must have colouring number at least $k/2 - o(k)$.

We study how many copies of a graph $F$ that another graph $G$ with a given number of cliques is guaranteed to have. For example, one of our main results states that for all $t\ge 2$, if $G$ is an $n$ vertex graph with $kn^{3/2}$ triangles and $k$ is sufficiently large in terms of $t$, then $G$ contains at least \[\Omega(\min\{k^t n^{3/2},k^{\frac{2t^2}{3t-1}}n^{\frac{5t-2}{3t-1}}\})\] copies of $K_{2,t}$, and furthermore, we show these bounds are essentially best-possible provided either $k\ge n^{1/2t}$ or if certain bipartite-analogues of well known conjectures for Tur\'an numbers hold., Comment: 21 pages

A family of sets $A$ is said to be an antichain if $x\not\subset y$ for all distinct $x,y\in A$, and it is said to be a distance-$r$ code if every pair of distinct elements of $A$ has Hamming distance at least $r$. Here, we prove that if $A\subset 2^{[n]}$ is both an antichain and a distance-$(2r+1)$ code, then $|A| = O_r(2^n n^{-r-1/2})$. This result, which is best-possible up to the implied constant, is a purely combinatorial strengthening of a number of results in Littlewood--Offord theory; for example, our result gives a short combinatorial proof of H\'alasz's theorem, while all previously known proofs of this result are Fourier-analytic., Comment: 8 pages

Given a random binary picture $P_n$ of size $n$, i.e., an $n\times n$ grid filled with zeros and ones uniformly at random, when is it possible to reconstruct $P_n$ from its $k$-deck, i.e., the multiset of all its $k\times k$ subgrids? We demonstrate ``two-point concentration'' for the reconstruction threshold by showing that there is an integer $k_c(n) \sim (2 \log n)^{1/2}$ such that if $k > k_c$, then $P_n$ is reconstructible from its $k$-deck with high probability, and if $k < k_c$, then with high probability, it is impossible to reconstruct $P_n$ from its $k$-deck. The proof of this result uses a combination of interface-exploration arguments and entropic arguments., Comment: 11 figures, 18 pages; improved exposition of Section 3 proofs

We show that the natural directed analogues of the KKL theorem [KKL88] and the Eldan--Gross inequality [EG20] from the analysis of Boolean functions fail to hold. This is in contrast to several other isoperimetric inequalities on the Boolean hypercube (such as the Poincare inequality, Margulis's inequality [Mar74] and Talagrand's inequality [Tal93]) for which directed strengthenings have recently been established., Comment: 5 pages. Comments welcome

We elucidate the relationship between the threshold and the expectation-threshold of a down-set. Qualitatively, our main result demonstrates that there exist down-sets with polynomial gaps between their thresholds and expectation-thresholds; in particular, the logarithmic gap predictions of Kahn--Kalai and Talagrand (recently proved by Park--Pham and Frankston--Kahn--Narayanan--Park) about up-sets do not apply to down-sets. Quantitatively, we show that any collection $\mathcal{G}$ of graphs on $[n]$ that covers the family of all triangle-free graphs on $[n]$ satisfies the inequality $\sum_{G \in \mathcal{G}} \exp(-\delta e(G^c) / \sqrt{n}) < 1/2$ for some universal $\delta > 0$, and this is essentially best-possible., Comment: 17 pages

In this paper, we show how one may (efficiently) construct two types of extremal combinatorial objects whose existence was previously conjectural. (*) Panchromatic Graphs: For fixed integer k, a k-panchromatic graph is, roughly speaking, a balanced bipartite graph with one partition class equipartitioned into k colour classes in which the common neighbourhoods of panchromatic k-sets of vertices are much larger than those of k-sets that repeat a colour. The question of their existence was raised by Karthik and Manurangsi [Combinatorica 2020]. (*) Threshold Graphs: For fixed integer k, a k-threshold graph is, roughly speaking, a balanced bipartite graph in which the common neighbourhoods of k-sets of vertices on one side are much larger than those of (k+1)-sets. The question of their existence was raised by Lin [JACM 2018]. As applications of our constructions, we show the following conditional time lower bounds on the parameterized set intersection problem where, given a collection of n sets over universe [n] and a parameter k, the goal is to find k sets with the largest intersection. (*) Assuming ETH, for any computable function F, no $n^{o(k)}$-time algorithm can approximate the parameterized set intersection problem up to factor F(k). This improves considerably on the previously best-known result under ETH due to Lin [JACM 2018], who ruled out any $n^{o(\sqrt{k})}$ time approximation algorithm for this problem. (*) Assuming SETH, for every $\varepsilon>0$ and any computable function F, no $n^{k-\varepsilon}$-time algorithm can approximate the parameterized set intersection problem up to factor F(k). No result of comparable strength was previously known under SETH, even for solving this problem exactly., Comment: Abstract in metadata shortened to meet arxiv requirements

Resolving a conjecture of F\"uredi from 1988, we prove that with high probability, the random graph $G(n,1/2)$ admits a friendly bisection of its vertex set, i.e., a partition of its vertex set into two parts whose sizes differ by at most one in which $n-o(n)$ vertices have at least as many neighbours in their own part as across. The engine of our proof is a new method to study stochastic processes driven by degree information in random graphs; this involves combining enumeration techniques with an abstract second moment argument., Comment: 21 pages, 3 appendices

We prove the following sharp estimate for the number of spanning trees of a graph in terms of its vertex-degrees: a simple graph $G$ on $n$ vertices has at most $(1/n^{2}) \prod_{v \in V(G)} (d(v)+1)$ spanning trees. This result is tight (for complete graphs), and improves earlier estimates of Alon from 1990 and Kostochka from 1995 by a factor of about $1/n$ (for dense graphs). We additionally show that an analogous bound holds for the weighted spanning tree enumerator of a (nonnegatively) weighted graph as well., Comment: It has been pointed out to us when this paper was under review that the results are not new; in fact a stronger bound was proved by Grone and Merris [Discrete Math. 69 (1988), 97-99]

Our first main result is a uniform bound, in every dimension $k \in \mathbb N$, on the topological Tur\'an numbers of $k$-dimensional simplicial complexes: for each $k \in \mathbb N$, there is a $\lambda_k \ge k^{-2k^2}$ such that for any $k$-complex $\mathcal{S}$, every $k$-complex on $n \ge n_0(\mathcal{S})$ vertices with at least $n^{k+1 - \lambda_k}$ facets contains a homeomorphic copy of $\mathcal{S}$. This was previously known only in dimensions one and two, both by highly dimension-specific arguments: the existence of $\lambda_1$ is a result of Mader from 1967, and the existence of $\lambda_2$ was suggested by Linial in 2006 and recently proved by Keevash-Long-Narayanan-Scott. We deduce this geometric fact from a purely combinatorial result about trace-bounded hypergraphs, where an $r$-partite $r$-graph $H$ with partite classes $V_1, V_2, \dots, V_r$ is said to be $d$-trace-bounded if for each $2 \le i \le r$, all the vertices of $V_i$ have degree at most $d$ in the trace of $H$ on $V_1 \cup V_2 \cup \dots \cup V_i$. Our second main result is the following estimate for the Tur\'an numbers of degenerate trace-bounded hypergraphs: for all $r \ge 2$ and $d\in\mathbb N$, there is an $\alpha_{r,d} \ge (5rd)^{1-r}$ such that for any $d$-trace-bounded $r$-partite $r$-graph $H$, every $r$-graph on $n \ge n_0(H)$ vertices with at least $n^{r - \alpha_{r,d}}$ edges contains a copy of $H$. This strengthens a result of Conlon-Fox-Sudakov from 2009 who showed that such a bound holds for $r$-partite $r$-graphs $H$ satisfying the stronger hypothesis that the vertex-degrees in all but one of its partite classes are bounded (in $H$, as opposed to in its traces)., Comment: 12 pages

Resolving a conjecture of K\"uhn and Osthus from 2012, we show that $p= 1/\sqrt{n}$ is the threshold for the random graph $G_{n,p}$ to contain the square of a Hamilton cycle., Comment: 6 pages

We prove a uniform bound on the topological Tur\'an number of an arbitrary two-dimensional simplicial complex $S$: any $n$-vertex two-dimensional complex with at least $C_S n^{3-1/5}$ facets contains a homeomorphic copy of $S$, where $C_S > 0$ is an absolute constant depending on $S$ alone. This result, a two-dimensional analogue of a classical result of Mader for one-dimensional complexes, sheds some light on an old problem of Linial from 2006., Comment: 9 pages, submitted

Resolving a problem raised by Norin, we show that for each $k \in \mathbb{N}$, there exists an $f(k) \le 7k$ such that every graph $G$ with chromatic number at least $f(k)+1$ contains a subgraph $H$ with both connectivity and chromatic number at least $k$. This result is best-possible up to multiplicative constants, and sharpens earlier results of Alon-Kleitman-Thomassen-Saks-Seymour from 1987 showing that $f(k) = O(k^3)$, and of Chudnovsky-Penev-Scott-Trotignon from 2013 showing that $f(k) = O(k^2)$. Our methods are robust enough to handle list colouring as well: we also show that for each $k \in \mathbb{N}$, there exists an $f_\ell(k) \le 4k$ such that every graph $G$ with list chromatic number at least $f_\ell(k)+1$ contains a subgraph $H$ with both connectivity and list chromatic number at least $k$. This result is again best-possible up to multiplicative constants; here, unlike with $f(\cdot)$, even the existence of $f_\ell(\cdot)$ appears to have been previously unknown., Comment: 6 pages

Amongst $d$-regular $r$-uniform hypergraphs on $n$ vertices, which ones have the largest number of independent sets? While the analogous problem for graphs (originally raised by Granville) is now well-understood, it is not even clear what the correct general conjecture ought to be; our goal here is propose such a generalisation. Lending credence to our conjecture, we verify it within the class of `quasi-bipartite' hypergraphs (a generalisation of bipartite graphs that seems natural in this context) by adopting the entropic approach of Kahn., Comment: 4 pages, submitted

Proving a conjecture of Talagrand, a fractional version of the 'expectation-threshold' conjecture of Kalai and the second author, we show for any increasing family $F$ on a finite set $X$ that $p_c (F) =O( q_f (F) \log \ell(F))$, where $p_c(F)$ and $q_f(F)$ are the threshold and 'fractional expectation-threshold' of $F$, and $\ell(F)$ is the largest size of a minimal member of $F$. This easily implies several heretofore difficult results and conjectures in probabilistic combinatorics, including thresholds for perfect hypergraph matchings (Johansson--Kahn--Vu), bounded-degree spanning trees (Montgomery), and bounded-degree spanning graphs (new). We also resolve (and vastly extend) the 'axial' version of the random multi-dimensional assignment problem (earlier considered by Martin--M\'{e}zard--Rivoire and Frieze--Sorkin). Our approach builds on a recent breakthrough of Alweiss, Lovett, Wu and Zhang on the Erd\H{o}s--Rado 'Sunflower Conjecture'., Comment: 16 pages, submitted, now includes some discussion of applications

A family of vectors $A \subset [k]^n$ is said to be intersecting if any two elements of $A$ agree on at least one coordinate. We prove, for fixed $k \ge 3$, that the size of a symmetric intersecting subfamily of $[k]^n$ is $o(k^n)$, which is in stark contrast to the case of the Boolean hypercube (where $k =2$). Our main contribution addresses limitations of existing technology: while there is now some spectral machinery, developed by Ellis and the third author, to tackle extremal problems in set theory involving symmetry, this machinery relies crucially on the interplay between up-sets and biased product measures on the Boolean hypercube, features that are notably absent in the problem at hand; here, we describe a method for circumventing these barriers., Comment: 6 pages; It has been brought to our attention that our main result (with slightly worse estimates) may be deduced from earlier work of Dinur, Friedgut and Regev, and this revision acknowledges this fact

We study the disproportionate version of the classical cake-cutting problem: how efficiently can we divide a cake, here $[0,1]$, among $n$ agents with different demands $\alpha_1, \alpha_2, \dots, \alpha_n$ summing to $1$? When all the agents have equal demands of $\alpha_1 = \alpha_2 = \dots = \alpha_n = 1/n$, it is well-known that there exists a fair division with $n-1$ cuts, and this is optimal. For arbitrary demands on the other hand, folklore arguments from algebraic topology show that $O(n\log n)$ cuts suffice, and this has been the state of the art for decades. Here, we improve the state of affairs in two ways: we prove that disproportionate division may always be achieved with $3n-4$ cuts, and give an effective combinatorial procedure to construct such a division. We also offer a topological conjecture that implies that $2n-2$ cuts suffice in general, which would be optimal., Comment: 8 pages, submitted

Given a connected graph $G$ with some subset of its vertices excited and a fixed target vertex, in the geodesic-biased random walk on $G$, a random walker moves as follows: from an unexcited vertex, she moves to a uniformly random neighbour, whereas from an excited vertex, she takes one step along some fixed shortest path towards the target vertex. We show, perhaps counterintuitively, that the geodesic-bias can slow the random walker down exponentially: there exist connected, bounded-degree $n$-vertex graphs with excitations where the expected hitting time of a fixed target is at least $\exp (\sqrt[4]{n} / 100)$., Comment: 11 pages, submitted

We prove Tur\'an-type theorems for two related Ramsey problems raised by Bollob\'as and by Fox and Sudakov. First, for $t \ge 3$, we show that any two-colouring of the complete graph on $n$ vertices that is $\delta$-far from being monochromatic contains an \emph{unavoidable $t$-colouring} when $\delta \gg n^{-1/t}$, where an unavoidable $t$-colouring is any two-colouring of a clique of order $2t$ in which one colour forms either a clique of order $t$ or two disjoint cliques of order $t$. Next, for $ t\ge 3$, we show that any tournament on $n$ vertices that is $\delta$-far from being transitive contains an \emph{unavoidable $t$-tournament} when $\delta \gg n^{-1/\lceil t/2 \rceil}$, where an unavoidable $t$-tournament is the blow-up of a cyclic triangle obtained by replacing each vertex of the triangle by a transitive tournament of order $t$. Conditional on a well-known conjecture about bipartite Tur\'an numbers, both results are sharp up to implied constants and hence determine the order of magnitude of the corresponding off-diagonal Ramsey numbers., Comment: 26 pages

For positive integers $r > \ell$, an $r$-uniform hypergraph is called an $\ell$-cycle if there exists a cyclic ordering of its vertices such that each of its edges consists of $r$ consecutive vertices, and such that every pair of consecutive edges (in the natural ordering of the edges) intersect in precisely $\ell$ vertices. Such cycles are said to be linear when $\ell = 1$, and nonlinear when $\ell > 1$. We determine the sharp threshold for nonlinear Hamiltonian cycles and show that for all $r > \ell > 1$, the threshold $p^*_{r, \ell} (n)$ for the appearance of a Hamiltonian $\ell$-cycle in the random $r$-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices is sharp and is $p^*_{r, \ell} (n) = \lambda(r,\ell) (\frac{\mathrm{e}}{n})^{r - \ell}$ for an explicitly specified function $\lambda$. This resolves several questions raised by Dudek and Frieze in 2011., Comment: 14 pages

In this paper, we study product-free subsets of the free semigroup over a finite alphabet $A$. We prove that the maximum density of a product-free subset of the free semigroup over $A$, with respect to the natural measure that assigns a weight of $|A|^{-n}$ to each word of length $n$, is precisely $1/2$., Comment: 8 pages, submitted

We prove a topological extension of Dirac's theorem suggested by Gowers in 2005: for any connected, closed surface $\mathscr{S}$, we show that any two-dimensional simplicial complex on $n$ vertices in which each pair of vertices belongs to at least $n/3 + o(n)$ facets contains a homeomorph of $\mathscr{S}$ spanning all the vertices. This result is asymptotically sharp, and implies in particular that any 3-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices with minimum codegree exceeding $n/3+o(n)$ contains a spanning triangulation of the $2$-sphere., Comment: 33 pages, 6 figures

If $\mathcal{W}$ is the simple random walk on the square lattice $\mathbb{Z}^2$, then $\mathcal{W}$ induces a random walk $\mathcal{W}_G$ on any spanning subgraph $G\subset \mathbb{Z}^2$ of the lattice as follows: viewing $\mathcal{W}$ as a uniformly random infinite word on the alphabet $\{\mathbf{x}, -\mathbf{x}, \mathbf{y}, -\mathbf{y} \}$, the walk $\mathcal{W}_G$ starts at the origin and follows the directions specified by $\mathcal{W}$, only accepting steps of $\mathcal{W}$ along which the walk $\mathcal{W}_G$ does not exit $G$. For any fixed subgraph $G \subset \mathbb{Z}^2$, the walk $\mathcal{W}_G$ is distributed as the simple random walk on $G$, and hence $\mathcal{W}_G$ is almost surely recurrent in the sense that $\mathcal{W}_G$ visits every site reachable from the origin in $G$ infinitely often. This fact naturally leads us to ask the following: does $\mathcal{W}$ almost surely have the property that $\mathcal{W}_G$ is recurrent for \emph{every} subgraph $G \subset \mathbb{Z}^2$? We answer this question negatively, demonstrating that exceptional subgraphs exist almost surely. In fact, we show more to be true: exceptional subgraphs continue to exist almost surely for a countable collection of independent simple random walks, but on the other hand, there are almost surely no exceptional subgraphs for a branching random walk., Comment: 19 pages, submitted

Ellis and the third author showed, verifying a conjecture of Frankl, that any $3$-wise intersecting family of subsets of $\{1,2,\dots,n\}$ admitting a transitive automorphism group has cardinality $o(2^n)$, while a construction of Frankl demonstrates that the same conclusion need not hold under the weaker constraint of being regular. Answering a question of Cameron, Frankl and Kantor from 1989, we show that the restriction of admitting a transitive automorphism group may be relaxed significantly: we prove that any $3$-wise intersecting family of subsets of $\{1,2,\dots,n\}$ that is regular and increasing has cardinality $o(2^n)$.

We prove that if an $n$-vertex graph with minimum degree at least $3$ contains a Hamiltonian cycle, then it contains another cycle of length $n-o(n)$; this implies, in particular, that a well-known conjecture of Sheehan from 1975 holds asymptotically. Our methods, which combine constructive, poset-based techniques and non-constructive, parity-based arguments, may be of independent interest., Comment: 15 pages, submitted, some typos fixed

We present a principled technique for reducing the lattice and matrix size in some applications of Coppersmith's lattice method for finding roots of modular polynomial equations. Motivated by ideas from machine learning, it relies on extrapolating patterns from the actual behavior of Coppersmith's attack for smaller parameter sizes, which can be thought of as "focus group" testing. When applied to the small-exponent RSA problem, our technique reduces lattice dimensions and consequently running times, and hence can be applied to a wider range of exponents. Moreover, in many difficult examples our attack is not only faster but also more successful in recovering the RSA secret key. We include a discussion of subtleties concerning whether or not existing metrics (such as enabling condition bounds) are decisive in predicting the true efficacy of attacks based on Coppersmith's method. Finally, indications are given which suggest certain lattice basis reduction algorithms (such as Nguyen-Stehl\'e's L2) may be particularly well-suited for Coppersmith's method., Comment: 21 pages, 5 figures

A colouring of the edges of an $n \times n$ grid is said to be \emph{reconstructible} if the colouring is uniquely determined by the multiset of its $n^2$ \emph{tiles}, where the tile corresponding to a vertex of the grid specifies the colours of the edges incident to that vertex in some fixed order. In 2015, Mossel and Ross asked the following question: if the edges of an $n \times n$ grid are coloured independently and uniformly at random using $q=q(n)$ different colours, then is the resulting colouring reconstructible with high probability? From below, Mossel and Ross showed that such a colouring is not reconstructible when $q = o(n^{2/3})$ and from above, Bordenave, Feige and Mossel and Nenadov, Pfister and Steger independently showed, for any fixed $\epsilon > 0$, that such a colouring is reconstructible when $q \ge n^{1+\epsilon}$. Here, we improve on these results and prove the following: there exist absolute constants $C, c > 0$ such that, as $n \to \infty$, the probability that a random colouring as above is reconstructible tends to $1$ if $q \ge Cn$ and to $0$ if $q \le cn$., Comment: 25 pages, 1 figure, submitted

The $r$-uniform linear $k$-cycle $C^r_k$ is the $r$-uniform hypergraph on $k(r-1)$ vertices whose edges are sets of $r$ consecutive vertices in a cyclic ordering of the vertex set chosen in such a way that every pair of consecutive edges share exactly one vertex. Here, we prove a balanced supersaturation result for linear cycles which we then use in conjunction with the method of hypergraph containers to show that for any fixed pair of integers $r, k \ge 3$, the number of $C^r_k$-free $r$-uniform hypergraphs on $n$ vertices is $2^{\Theta(n^{r-1})}$, thereby settling a conjecture due to Mubayi and Wang., Comment: 15 pages, submitted

We study a variant of the chip-firing game called \emph{diffusion}. In diffusion on a graph, each vertex of the graph is initially labelled with an integer interpreted as the number of chips at that vertex, and at each subsequent step, each vertex simultaneously fires one chip to each of its neighbours with fewer chips. Since this firing rule may result in negative labels, diffusion, unlike the parallel chip-firing game, is not obviously periodic. In 2016, Duffy, Lidbetter, Messinger and Nowakowski nevertheless conjectured that diffusion is always eventually periodic, and moreover, that the process eventually has period either 1 or 2. Here, we establish this conjecture., Comment: 7 pages, submitted

Folkman's Theorem asserts that for each $k \in \mathbb{N}$, there exists a natural number $n = F(k)$ such that whenever the elements of $[n]$ are two-coloured, there exists a set $A \subset [n]$ of size $k$ with the property that all the sums of the form $\sum_{x \in B} x$, where $B$ is a nonempty subset of $A$, are contained in $[n]$ and have the same colour. In 1989, Erd\H{o}s and Spencer showed that $F(k) \ge 2^{ck^2/ \log k}$, where $c >0$ is an absolute constant; here, we improve this bound significantly by showing that $F(k) \ge 2^{2^{k-1}/k}$ for all $k\in \mathbb{N}$., Comment: 5 pages, Bulletin of the LMS

We make some progress on a question of Babai from the 1970s, namely: for $n, k \in \mathbb{N}$ with $k \le n/2$, what is the largest possible cardinality $s(n,k)$ of an intersecting family of $k$-element subsets of $\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$ admitting a transitive group of automorphisms? We give upper and lower bounds for $s(n,k)$, and show in particular that $s(n,k) = o (\binom{n-1}{k-1})$ as $n \to \infty$ if and only if $k = n/2 - \omega(n)(n/\log n)$ for some function $\omega(\cdot)$ that increases without bound, thereby determining the threshold at which `symmetric' intersecting families are negligibly small compared to the maximum-sized intersecting families. We also exhibit connections to some basic questions in group theory and additive number theory, and pose a number of problems., Comment: Minor change to the statement (and proof) of Theorem 1.4; the authors thank Nathan Keller and Omri Marcus for pointing out a mistake in the previous version

We study a geometrically constrained coalescence model derived from spin systems. Given two probability distributions $\mathbb{P}_R$ and $\mathbb{P}_B$ on the positive reals with finite means, colour the real line alternately with red and blue intervals so that the lengths of the red intervals have distribution $\mathbb{P}_R$, the lengths of the blue intervals have distribution $\mathbb{P}_B$, and distinct intervals have independent lengths. Now, iteratively update this colouring of the line by coalescing intervals: change the colour of any interval that is surrounded by longer intervals so that these three consecutive intervals subsequently form a single monochromatic interval. We say that a colour (either red or blue) wins if every point of the line is eventually of that colour. Holroyd, in 2011, asked the following question: under what natural conditions on the initial distributions is one of the colours almost surely guaranteed to win? It turns out that the answer to this question can be quite counter-intuitive due to the non-monotone dynamics of the model. In this paper, we investigate various notions of advantage one of the colours might initially possess, and in the course of doing so, we determine which of the two colours emerges victorious for various nontrivial pairs of distributions., Comment: 50 pages, 3 figures, Transactions of the AMS

We study a higher-dimensional 'balls-into-bins' problem. An infinite sequence of i.i.d. random vectors is revealed to us one vector at a time, and we are required to partition these vectors into a fixed number of bins in such a way as to keep the sums of the vectors in the different bins close together; how close can we keep these sums almost surely? This question, our primary focus in this paper, is closely related to the classical problem of partitioning a sequence of vectors into balanced subsequences, in addition to having applications to some problems in computer science., Comment: 17 pages, Discrete Analysis

A graph on $n$ vertices is said to be \emph{$C$-Ramsey} if every clique or independent set of the graph has size at most $C \log n$. The only known constructions of Ramsey graphs are probabilistic in nature, and it is generally believed that such graphs possess many of the same properties as dense random graphs. Here, we demonstrate one such property: for any fixed $C>0$, every $C$-Ramsey graph on $n$ vertices induces subgraphs of at least $n^{2-o(1)}$ distinct sizes. This near-optimal result is closely related to two unresolved conjectures, the first due to Erd\H{o}s and McKay and the second due to Erd\H{o}s, Faudree and S\'{o}s, both from 1992., Comment: 24 pages, Combinatorica

Let $\hom(G)$ denote the size of the largest clique or independent set of a graph $G$. In 2007, Bukh and Sudakov proved that every $n$-vertex graph $G$ with $\hom(G) = O(\log n)$ contains an induced subgraph with $\Omega(n^{1/2})$ distinct degrees, and raised the question of deciding whether an analogous result holds for every $n$-vertex graph $G$ with $\hom(G) = O(n^\epsilon)$, where $\epsilon > 0$ is a fixed constant. Here, we answer their question in the affirmative and show that every graph $G$ on $n$ vertices contains an induced subgraph with $\Omega((n/\hom(G))^{1/2})$ distinct degrees. We also prove a stronger result for graphs with large cliques or independent sets and show, for any fixed $k \in \mathbb{N}$, that if an $n$-vertex graph $G$ contains no induced subgraph with $k$ distinct degrees, then $\hom(G) \ge n/(k-1)-o(n)$; this bound is essentially best-possible., Comment: 17 pages, Combinatorics, Probability and Computing

Given an undirected graph $G$, let us randomly orient $G$ by tossing independent (possibly biased) coins, one for each edge of $G$. Writing $a\rightarrow b$ for the event that there exists a directed path from a vertex $a$ to a vertex $b$ in such a random orientation, we prove that $\mathbb{P}(s\rightarrow a \cap s\rightarrow b) \ge \mathbb{P}(s\rightarrow a) \mathbb{P}(s\rightarrow b)$ for any three vertices $s$, $a$ and $b$ of $G$., Comment: 6 pages, Combinatorics, Probability and Computing

For natural numbers $n,r \in \mathbb{N}$ with $n\ge r$, the Kneser graph $K(n,r)$ is the graph on the family of $r$-element subsets of $\{1,\dots,n\}$ in which two sets are adjacent if and only if they are disjoint. Delete the edges of $K(n,r)$ with some probability, independently of each other: is the independence number of this random graph equal to the independence number of the Kneser graph itself? We answer this question affirmatively as long as $r/n$ is bounded away from $1/2$, even when the probability of retaining an edge of the Kneser graph is quite small. This gives us a random analogue of the Erd\H{o}s-Ko-Rado theorem since an independent set in the Kneser graph is the same as a uniform intersecting family. To prove our main result, we give some new estimates for the number of disjoint pairs in a family in terms of its distance from an intersecting family, these might be of independent interest., Comment: 19 pages, fixed misprints, Forum of Mathematics, Sigma

We study the problem of cops and robbers on the grid where the robber is allowed to move faster than the cops. It is well known that two cops are necessary and sufficient to catch the robber on any finite grid when the robber has unit speed. Here, we prove that when the speed of the robber is a sufficiently large constant, the number of cops needed to catch the robber on an $n \times n$ grid is $\exp(\Omega(\log n / \log \log n))$., Comment: 15 pages, Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A

A family of sets is said to be symmetric if its automorphism group is transitive, and $3$-wise intersecting if any three sets in the family have nonempty intersection. Frankl conjectured in 1981 that if $\mathcal{A}$ is a symmetric $3$-wise intersecting family of subsets of $\{1,2,\dots,n\}$, then $|\mathcal{A}| = o(2^n)$. Here, we give a short proof of Frankl's conjecture using a 'sharp threshold' result of Friedgut and Kalai., Comment: 7 pages, typo corrected in description of 'tree' construction in Section 3. Proc. Amer. Math. Soc

We investigate the following generalisation of the 'multiplication table problem' of Erd\H{o}s: given a bipartite graph with $m$ edges, how large is the set of sizes of its induced subgraphs? Erd\H{o}s's problem of estimating the number of distinct products $ab$ with $a,b \le n$ is precisely the problem under consideration when the graph in question is the complete bipartite graph $K_{n,n}$. In this note, we prove that the set of sizes of the induced subgraphs of any bipartite graph with $m$ edges contains $\Omega(m/(\log m)^{12})$ distinct elements., Comment: 21 pages, fixed misprints, Combinatorica

Delete the edges of a Kneser graph independently of each other with some probability: for what probabilities is the independence number of this random graph equal to the independence number of the Kneser graph itself? We prove a sharp threshold result for this question in certain regimes. Since an independent set in the Kneser graph is the same as a uniform intersecting family, this gives us a random analogue of the Erd\H{o}s-Ko-Rado theorem., Comment: 17 pages, fixed misprints, Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A

We study a new geometric bootstrap percolation model, line percolation, on the $d$-dimensional integer grid $[n]^d$. In line percolation with infection parameter $r$, infection spreads from a subset $A\subset [n]^d$ of initially infected lattice points as follows: if there exists an axis-parallel line $L$ with $r$ or more infected lattice points on it, then every lattice point of $[n]^d$ on $L$ gets infected, and we repeat this until the infection can no longer spread. The elements of the set $A$ are usually chosen independently, with some density $p$, and the main question is to determine $p_c(n,r,d)$, the density at which percolation (infection of the entire grid) becomes likely. In this paper, we determine $p_c(n,r,2)$ up to a multiplicative factor of $1+o(1)$ and $p_c(n,r,3)$ up to a multiplicative constant as $n\rightarrow \infty$ for every fixed $r\in \mathbb{N}$. We also determine the size of the minimal percolating sets in all dimensions and for all values of the infection parameter., Comment: 27 pages, Random Structures and Algorithms

For a graph $G$, let $f(G)$ be the largest integer $k$ for which there exist two vertex-disjoint induced subgraphs of $G$ each on $k$ vertices, both inducing the same number of edges. We prove that $f(G) \ge n/2 - o(n)$ for every graph $G$ on $n$ vertices. This answers a question of Caro and Yuster., Comment: 25 pages, improved presentation, fixed misprints, European Journal of Combinatorics

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 Combinatorics