Benny Sudakov

• Ph.D
• Professor (Full) at ETH Zurich

Extremal problems on set systems with restricted intersections have been an important part of combinatorics in the last 70 year. In this paper, we study the following Ramsey version of these problems. Given a set $L\subseteq \{0,\dots,k-1\}$ and a family $\mathcal{F}$ of $k$-element sets which does not contain a sunflower with $m$ petals whose kern...

For two graphs F , H and a positive integer n , the function $$f_{F,H}(n)$$ f F , H ( n ) denotes the largest m such that every H -free graph on n vertices contains an F -free induced subgraph on m vertices. This function has been extensively studied in the last 60 years when F and H are cliques and became known as the Erdős–Rogers function. Recent...

An ordered r-matching is an r -uniform hypergraph matching equipped with an ordering on its vertices. These objects can be viewed as natural generalisations of r-dimensional orders . The theory of ordered 2-matchings is well developed and has connections and applications to extremal and enumerative combinatorics, probability and geometry. On the ot...

We develop novel methods for constructing nearly Hamilton cycles in sublinear expanders with good regularity properties, as well as new techniques for finding such expanders in general graphs. These methods are of independent interest due to their potential for various applications to embedding problems in sparse graphs. In particular, using these...

Given a $k$-uniform hypergraph $H$ on $n$ vertices, an even cover in $H$ is a collection of hyperedges that touch each vertex an even number of times. Even covers are a generalization of cycles in graphs and are equivalent to linearly dependent subsets of a system of linear equations modulo $2$. As a result, they arise naturally in the context of w...

We prove that, for all $k \ge 3,$ and any integers $\Delta, n$ with $n \ge \Delta,$ there exists a $k$-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices with maximum degree at most $\Delta$ whose $4$-color Ramsey number is at least $\mathrm{tw}_k(c_k \sqrt{\Delta}) \cdot n$, for some constant $c_k > 0$, where $\mathrm{tw}_k$ denotes the tower function. This is ti...

Optimistic rollups rely on fraud proofs -- interactive protocols executed on Ethereum to resolve conflicting claims about the rollup's state -- to scale Ethereum securely. To mitigate against potential censorship of protocol moves, fraud proofs grant participants a significant time window, known as the challenge period, to ensure their moves are pr...

In his seminal 1976 paper, Pósa showed that for all p ≥ C log ⁡ n / n p\geq C\log n/n , the binomial random graph G ( n , p ) G(n,p) is with high probability Hamiltonian. This leads to the following natural questions, which have been extensively studied: How well is it typically possible to cover all edges of G ( n , p ) G(n,p) with Hamilton cycles...

For 2≤s<t$$ 2\le s<t $$, the Erdős–Rogers function fs,t(n)$$ {f}_{s,t}(n) $$ measures how large a Ks$$ {K}_s $$‐free induced subgraph there must be in a Kt$$ {K}_t $$‐free graph on n$$ n $$ vertices. There has been an extensive amount of work towards estimating this function, but until very recently only the case t=s+1$$ t=s+1 $$ was well understoo...

The q-colour Ramsey number of a k-uniform hypergraph H is the minimum integer N such that any q-colouring of the complete k-uniform hypergraph on N vertices contains a monochromatic copy of H. The study of these numbers is one of the central topics in Combinatorics. In 1973, Erdős and Graham asked to maximise the Ramsey number of a graph as a funct...

Given a vertex-ordered graph $G$, the ordered Ramsey number $r_<(G)$ is the minimum integer $N$ such that every $2$-coloring of the edges of the complete ordered graph $K_N$ contains a monochromatic ordered copy of $G$. Motivated by a similar question posed by Erd\H{o}s and Graham in the unordered setting, we study the problem of bounding the order...

A properly edge-colored graph is a graph with a coloring of its edges such that no vertex is incident to two or more edges of the same color. A subgraph is called rainbow if all its edges have different colors. The problem of finding rainbow subgraphs or other restricted structures in edge-colored graphs has a long history, dating back to Euler's w...

More than 40 years ago, Galvin, Rival and Sands showed that every $K_{s, s}$-free graph containing an $n$-vertex path must contain an induced path of length $f(n)$, where $f(n)\to \infty$ as $n\to \infty$. Recently, it was shown by Duron, Esperet and Raymond that one can take $f(n)=(\log \log n)^{1/5-o(1)}$. In this note, we give a short self-conta...

We study and solve several problems in two closely related settings: set families in $2^{[n]}$ with many disjoint pairs of sets and low rank matrices with many zero entries. - More than 40 years ago, Daykin and Erd\H{o}s asked for the maximum number of disjoint pairs of sets in a family $F\subseteq 2^{[n]}$ of size $2^{(1/2+\delta)n}$ and conjectur...

Many well-known problems in combinatorics can be reduced to finding a large rainbow structure in a certain edge-coloured multigraph. Two celebrated examples of this are Ringel’s tree packing conjecture and Ryser’s conjecture on transversals in Latin squares. In this paper, we answer such a question raised by Grinblat twenty years ago. Let an (n, v)...

The canonical Ramsey theorem of Erd\H{o}s and Rado implies that for any graph $H$, any edge-coloring (with an arbitrary number of colors) of a sufficiently large complete graph $K_N$ contains a monochromatic, lexicographic, or rainbow copy of $H$. The least such $N$ is called the Erd\H{o}s-Rado number of $H$, denoted by $ER(H)$. Erd\H{o}s-Rado numb...

In 1992, Erd\H{o}s and Hajnal posed the following natural problem: Does there exist, for every $r\in \mathbb{N}$, an integer $F(r)$ such that every graph with chromatic number at least $F(r)$ contains $r$ edge-disjoint cycles on the same vertex set? We solve this problem in a strong form, by showing that there exist $n$-vertex graphs with fractiona...

An n -vertex graph is Hamiltonian if it contains a cycle that covers all of its vertices, and it is pancyclic if it contains cycles of all lengths from 3 up to n . In 1972, Erdős conjectured that every Hamiltonian graph with independence number at most k and at least n = \Omega(k^{2}) vertices is pancyclic. We prove this old conjecture in a strong...

For two graphs $F,H$ and a positive integer $n$, the function $f_{F,H}(n)$ denotes the largest $m$ such that every $H$-free graph on $n$ vertices contains an $F$-free induced subgraph on $m$ vertices. This function has been extensively studied in the last 60 years when $F$ and $H$ are cliques and became known as the Erd\H{o}s-Rogers function. Recen...

We prove that the maximum number of edges in a 3-uniform linear hypergraph on $n$ vertices containing no 2-regular subhypergraph is $n^{1+o(1)}$. This resolves a conjecture of Dellamonica, Haxell, Łuczak, Mubayi, Nagle, Person, Rödl, Schacht, and Verstraëte. We use this result to show that the maximum number of edges in a $3$-uniform hypergraph on...

The q-color Ramsey number of a k-uniform hypergraph G, denoted r(G; q), is the minimum integer N such that any coloring of the edges of the complete k-uniform hypergraph on N vertices contains a monochromatic copy of G. The study of these numbers is one of the most central topics in combinatorics. One natural question, which for triangles goes back...

We study the amount of maximal extractable value (MEV) captured by validators, as a function of searcher competition, in blockchains with competitive block building markets such as Ethereum. We argue that the core is a suitable solution concept in this context that makes robust predictions that are independent of implementation details or specific...

Given an \(m\times n\) binary matrix M with \(|M|=p\cdot mn\) (where |M| denotes the number of 1 entries), define the discrepancy of M as \({{\,\textrm{disc}\,}}(M)=\displaystyle \max \nolimits _{X\subset [m], Y\subset [n]}\big ||M[X\times Y]|-p|X|\cdot |Y|\big |\). Using semidefinite programming and spectral techniques, we prove that if \({{\,\tex...

A graph $G$ is said to be $p$-locally dense if every induced subgraph of $G$ with linearly many vertices has edge density at least $p$. A famous conjecture of Kohayakawa, Nagle, R\"odl, and Schacht predicts that locally dense graphs have, asymptotically, at least as many copies of any fixed graph $H$ as are found in a random graph of edge density $...

The celebrated Erd\H{o}s-Hajnal conjecture says that any graph without a fixed induced subgraph $H$ contains a very large homogeneous set. A direct analog of this conjecture is not true for hypergraphs. In this paper we present two natural variants of this problem which do hold for hypergraphs. We show that for every $r \geq 3$, $m \geq m_0(r)$ and...

We show that the edges of any $d$-regular graph can be almost decomposed into paths of length roughly $d$, giving an approximate solution to a problem of Kotzig from 1957. Along the way, we show that almost all of the vertices of a $d$-regular graph can be partitioned into $n/(d+1)$ paths, asymptotically confirming a conjecture of Magnant and Marti...

The induced $q$-color size-Ramsey number $\hat{r}_{\text{ind}}(H;q)$ of a graph $H$ is the minimal number of edges a host graph $G$ can have so that every $q$-edge-coloring of $G$ contains a monochromatic copy of $H$ which is an induced subgraph of $G$. A natural question, which in the non-induced case has a very long history, asks which families o...

We prove the following variant of Helly's classical theorem for Hamming balls with a bounded radius. For $n>t$ and any (finite or infinite) set $X$, if in a family of Hamming balls of radius $t$ in $X^n$, every subfamily of at most $2^{t+1}$ balls have a common point, so do all members of the family. This is tight for all $|X|>1$ and all $n>t$. The...

The induced size-Ramsey number $$\hat{r}_\text {ind}^k(H)$$ r ^ ind k ( H ) of a graph H is the smallest number of edges a (host) graph G can have such that for any k -coloring of its edges, there exists a monochromatic copy of H which is an induced subgraph of G . In 1995, in their seminal paper, Haxell, Kohayakawa and Łuczak showed that for cycle...

In 1975, Erd̋s asked the following question: What is the maximum number of edges that an $n$-vertex graph can have without containing a cycle with all diagonals? Erd̋s observed that the upper bound $O(n^{5/3})$ holds since the complete bipartite graph $K_{3,3}$ can be viewed as a cycle of length six with all diagonals. In this paper, we resolve thi...

The bipartite independence number of a graph $G$ , denoted as $\tilde \alpha (G)$ , is the minimal number $k$ such that there exist positive integers $a$ and $b$ with $a+b=k+1$ with the property that for any two disjoint sets $A,B\subseteq V(G)$ with $|A|=a$ and $|B|=b$ , there is an edge between $A$ and $B$ . McDiarmid and Yolov showed that if $\d...

In this paper we study the fundamental problem of finding small dense subgraphs in a given graph. For a real number $$s>2$$ s > 2 , we prove that every graph on n vertices with average degree $$d\ge s$$ d ≥ s contains a subgraph of average degree at least s on at most $$nd^{-\frac{s}{s-2}}(\log d)^{O_s(1)}$$ n d - s s - 2 ( log d ) O s ( 1 ) vertic...

An n-vertex graph is Hamiltonian if it contains a cycle that covers all of its vertices and it is pancyclic if it contains cycles of all lengths from 3 up to n. A celebrated meta-conjecture of Bondy states that every non-trivial condition implying Hamiltonicity also implies pancyclicity (up to possibly a few exceptional graphs). We show that every...

In 1964, Erdős proposed the problem of estimating the Turán number of the d -dimensional hypercube $Q_d$ . Since $Q_d$ is a bipartite graph with maximum degree d , it follows from results of Füredi and Alon, Krivelevich, Sudakov that $\mathrm {ex}(n,Q_d)=O_d(n^{2-1/d})$ . A recent general result of Sudakov and Tomon implies the slightly stronger bo...

The study of ordered Ramsey numbers of monotone paths for graphs and hypergraphs has a long history, going back to the celebrated work by Erdős and Szekeres in the early days of Ramsey theory. In this paper we obtain several results in this area, establishing two conjectures of Mubayi and Suk and improving bounds due to Balko, Cibulka, Král and Kyn...

How many edges in an n$$ n $$‐vertex graph will force the existence of a cycle with as many chords as it has vertices? Almost 30 years ago, Chen, Erdős and Staton considered this question and showed that any n$$ n $$‐vertex graph with 2n3/2$$ 2{n}^{3/2} $$ edges contains such a cycle. We significantly improve this old bound by showing that Ω(nlog8n...

Given positive integers k≤d\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$k\le d$$\end{document} and a finite field F\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath}...

Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting and studying properties of discrete objects such as graphs, set systems, partial orders, polyhedra, etc. Combinatorial problems naturally arise in many areas of mathematics, such as algebra, geometry, probability theory, and topology, and in theoretical computer science. Hist...

In 1975, Erd\H{o}s asked the following natural question: What is the maximum number of edges that an $n$-vertex graph can have without containing a cycle with all diagonals? Erd\H{o}s observed that the upper bound $O(n^{5/3})$ holds since the complete bipartite graph $K_{3,3}$ can be viewed as a cycle of length six with all diagonals. In this paper...

The \emph{bipartite independence number} of a graph $G$, denoted as $\tilde\alpha(G)$, is the minimal number $k$ such that there exist positive integers $a$ and $b$ with $a+b=k+1$ with the property that for any two sets $A,B\subseteq V(G)$ with $|A|=a$ and $|B|=b$, there is an edge between $A$ and $B$. McDiarmid and Yolov showed that if $\delta(G)\...

An ordered $r$-matching is an $r$-uniform hypergraph matching equipped with an ordering on its vertices. These objects can be viewed as natural generalisations of $r$-dimensional orders. The theory of ordered 2-matchings is well-developed and has connections and applications to extremal and enumerative combinatorics, probability, and geometry. On t...

A typical theme for many well-known decomposition problems is to show that some obvious necessary conditions for decomposing a graph $G$ into copies $H_1, \ldots, H_m$ are also sufficient. One such problem was posed in 1987, by Alavi, Boals, Chartrand, Erd\H{o}s, and Oellerman. They conjectured that the edges of every graph with $\binom{m+1}2$ edge...

The $q$-color Ramsey number of a $k$-uniform hypergraph $H$ is the minimum integer $N$ such that any $q$-coloring of the complete $k$-uniform hypergraph on $N$ vertices contains a monochromatic copy of $H$. The study of these numbers is one of the central topics in Combinatorics. In 1973, Erd\H{o}s and Graham asked to maximize the Ramsey number of...

The study of ordered Ramsey numbers of monotone paths for graphs and hypergraphs has a long history, going back to the celebrated work by Erd\H{o}s and Szekeres in the early days of Ramsey theory. In this paper we obtain several results in this area, establishing two conjectures of Mubayi and Suk and improving bounds due to Balko, Cibulka, Kr\'al a...

In this paper, we completely resolve the well-known problem of Erdős and Sauer from 1975 which asks for the maximum number of edges an n -vertex graph can have without containing a k -regular subgraph, for some fixed integer $k\geq 3$ . We prove that any n -vertex graph with average degree at least $C_k\log \log n$ contains a k -regular subgraph. T...

For $2\leq s<t$, the Erd\H{o}s-Rogers function $f_{s,t}(n)$ measures how large a $K_s$-free induced subgraph there must be in a $K_t$-free graph on $n$ vertices. There has been a tremendeus amount of work towards estimating this function, but until very recently only the case $t=s+1$ was well understood. A recent breakthrough of Mattheus and Verstr...

How many edges in an $n$-vertex graph will force the existence of a cycle with as many chords as it has vertices? Almost 30 years ago, Chen, Erd\H{o}s and Staton considered this question and showed that any $n$-vertex graph with $2n^{3/2}$ edges contains such a cycle. We significantly improve this old bound by showing that $\Omega(n\log^8n)$ edges...

In this short note we prove a lower bound for the MaxCut of a graph in terms of the Lov\'asz theta function of its complement. We combine this with known bounds on the Lov\'asz theta function of complements of $H$-free graphs to recover many known results on the MaxCut of $H$-free graphs. In particular, we give a new, very short proof of a conjectu...

For positive integers s, t, r, let \(K_{s,t}^{(r)}\) denote the r-uniform hypergraph whose vertex set is the union of pairwise disjoint sets \(X,Y_1,\dots ,Y_t\), where \(|X| = s\) and \(|Y_1| = \dots = |Y_t| = r-1\), and whose edge set is \(\{\{x\} \cup Y_i: x \in X, 1\le i\le t\}\). The study of the Turán function of \(K_{s,t}^{(r)}\) received co...

The MaxCut problem asks for the size of a largest cut in a graph . It is well known that for any ‐edge graph , and the difference is called the surplus of . The study of the surplus of ‐free graphs was initiated by Erdős and Lovász in the 70s, who, in particular, asked what happens for triangle‐free graphs. This was famously resolved by Alon, who s...

The following natural problem was raised independently by Erdős–Hajnal and Linial–Rabinovich in the early ’90 s. How large must the independence number $$\alpha (G)$$ α ( G ) of a graph G be whose every m vertices contain an independent set of size r ? In this paper, we discuss new methods to attack this problem. The first new approach, based on bo...

A chordal graph is a graph with no induced cycles of length at least $4$ . Let $f(n,m)$ be the maximal integer such that every graph with $n$ vertices and $m$ edges has a chordal subgraph with at least $f(n,m)$ edges. In 1985 Erdős and Laskar posed the problem of estimating $f(n,m)$ . In the late 1980s, Erdős, Gyárfás, Ordman and Zalcstein determin...

Finding general conditions which ensure that a graph is Hamiltonian is a central topic in graph theory. An old and well known conjecture in the area states that any $d$-regular $n$-vertex graph $G$ whose second largest eigenvalue in absolute value $\lambda(G)$ is at most $\frac{d}{C}$, for some universal constant $C>0$, has a Hamilton cycle. In thi...

The bipartite independence number of a graph $G$, denoted as $\tilde\alpha(G)$, is the minimal number $k$ such that there exist positive integers $a$ and $b$ with $a+b=k+1$ with the property that for any two sets $A,B\subseteq V(G)$ with $|A|=a$ and $|B|=b$, there is an edge between $A$ and $B$. McDiarmid and Yolov showed that if $\delta(G)\geq\til...

The Ramsey number r(G) of a graph G is the smallest integer n such that any 2 colouring of the edges of a clique on n vertices contains a monochromatic copy of G. Determining the Ramsey number of G is a central problem of Ramsey theory with long and illustrious history. Despite this there are precious few classes of graphs G for which the value of...

We provide a short and self‐contained proof of the classical result of Kostochka and of Thomason, ensuring that every graph of average degree d $d$ has a complete minor of order Ω ( d ∕ log d ) ${\rm{\Omega }}(d\unicode{x02215}\sqrt{{\rm{log}}d})$.

The graph removal lemma is a fundamental result in extremal graph theory which says that for every fixed graph $H$ and $\varepsilon > 0$, if an $n$-vertex graph $G$ contains $\varepsilon n^2$ edge-disjoint copies of $H$ then $G$ contains $\delta n^{v(H)}$ copies of $H$ for some $\delta = \delta(\varepsilon,H) > 0$. The current proofs of the removal...

An $n$-vertex graph is Hamiltonian if it contains a cycle that covers all of its vertices and it is pancyclic if it contains cycles of all lengths from $3$ up to $n$. A celebrated meta-conjecture of Bondy states that every non-trivial condition implying Hamiltonicity also implies pancyclicity (up to possibly a few exceptional graphs). We show that...

The induced size-Ramsey number $\hat{r}_\text{ind}^k(H)$ of a graph $H$ is the smallest number of edges a (host) graph $G$ can have such that for any $k$-coloring of its edges, there exists a monochromatic copy of $H$ which is an induced subgraph of $G$. In 1995, in their seminal paper, Haxell, Kohayakawa and Luczak showed that for cycles, these nu...

The Ramsey number r(H) of a graph H is the minimum integer n such that any two-coloring of the edges of the complete graph Kn contains a monochromatic copy of H. While this definition only asks for a single monochromatic copy of H, it is often the case that every two-edge-coloring of the complete graph on r(H) vertices contains many monochromatic c...

A basic result in graph theory says that any n-vertex tournament with in- and out-degrees larger than n−24 contains a Hamilton cycle, and this is tight. In 1990, Bollobás and Häggkvist significantly extended this by showing that for any fixed k and ε>0, and sufficiently large n, all tournaments with degrees at least n4+εn contain the k-th power of...

Finding general conditions which ensure that a graph is Hamiltonian is a central topic in graph theory. An old and well known conjecture in the area states that any $d$-regular $n$-vertex graph $G$ whose second largest eigenvalue in absolute value $\lambda(G)$ is at most $d/C$, for some universal constant $C>0$, has a Hamilton cycle. We obtain two...

An $n$-vertex graph is \emph{Hamiltonian} if it contains a cycle that covers all of its vertices and it is \emph{pancyclic} if it contains cycles of all lengths from $3$ up to $n$. A celebrated meta-conjecture of Bondy states that every non-trivial condition implying Hamiltonicity also implies pancyclicity (up to possibly a few exceptional graphs)....

The graph removal lemma is a fundamental result in extremal graph theory which says that for every fixed graph $H$ and $\varepsilon > 0$, if an $n$-vertex graph $G$ contains $\varepsilon n^2$ edge-disjoint copies of $H$ then $G$ contains $\delta n^{v(H)}$ copies of $H$ for some $\delta = \delta(\varepsilon,H) > 0$. The current proofs of the removal...

The induced size-Ramsey number $\hat{r}_\text{ind}^k(H)$ of a graph $H$ is the smallest number of edges a (host) graph $G$ can have such that for any $k$-coloring of its edges, there exists a monochromatic copy of $H$ which is an induced subgraph of $G$. In 1995, in their seminal paper, Haxell, Kohayakawa and {\L}uczak showed that for cycles, these...

A collection of distinct sets is called a sunflower if the intersection of any pair of sets equals the common intersection of all the sets. Sunflowers are fundamental objects in extremal set theory with relations and applications to many other areas of mathematics as well as to theoretical computer science. A central problem in the area due to Erdő...

In 1964, Erd\H{o}s proposed the problem of estimating the Tur\'an number of the $d$-dimensional hypercube $Q_d$. Since $Q_d$ is a bipartite graph with maximum degree $d$, it follows from results of F\"uredi and Alon, Krivelevich, Sudakov that $\mathrm{ex}(n,Q_d)=O_d(n^{2-1/d})$. A recent general result of Sudakov and Tomon implies the slightly stro...

The study of problems concerning subdivisions of graphs has a rich history in extremal combinatorics. Confirming a conjecture of Burr and Erdős, Alon proved in 1994 that subdivided graphs have linear Ramsey numbers. Later, Alon, Krivelevich and Sudakov showed that every n-vertex graph with at least εn2 edges contains a 1-subdivision of the complete...

One of the central questions in Ramsey theory asks how small the largest clique and independent set in a graph on N vertices can be. By the celebrated result of Erdős from 1947, a random graph on N vertices with edge probability $1/2$ contains no clique or independent set larger than $2\log _2 N$ , with high probability. Finding explicit constructi...

An $n$-vertex graph is Hamiltonian if it contains a cycle that covers all of its vertices, and it is pancyclic if it contains cycles of all lengths from $3$ up to $n$. In 1972, Erd\H{o}s conjectured that every Hamiltonian graph with independence number at most $k$ and at least $n = \Omega(k^2)$ vertices is pancyclic. In this paper we prove this old...

In 1999, Jacobson and Lehel conjectured that, for $k \geq 3$ , every k -regular Hamiltonian graph has cycles of $\Theta (n)$ many different lengths. This was further strengthened by Verstraëte, who asked whether the regularity can be replaced with the weaker condition that the minimum degree is at least $3$ . Despite attention from various research...

The classical Erdős–Szekeres theorem dating back almost a hundred years states that any sequence of (n-1)^2 + 1 distinct real numbers contains a monotone subsequence of length n . This theorem has been generalised to higher dimensions in a variety of ways but perhaps the most natural one was proposed by Fishburn and Graham more than 25 years ago. T...

We prove that the maximum number of edges in a 3-uniform linear hypergraph on $n$ vertices containing no 2-regular subhypergraph is $n^{1+o(1)}$. This resolves a conjecture of Dellamonica, Haxell, Luczak, Mubayi, Nagle, Person, R\"odl, Schacht and Verstra\"ete. We use this result to show that the maximum number of edges in a $3$-uniform hypergraph...

Given positive integers $k\leq d$ and a finite field $\mathbb{F}$, a set $S\subset\mathbb{F}^{d}$ is $(k,c)$-subspace evasive if every $k$-dimensional affine subspace contains at most $c$ elements of $S$. The main setting we consider is when $k$ and $d$ are fixed, and $|\mathbb{F}|$ is arbitrarily large. By a simple averaging argument, the maximum...

A subgraph of an edge-coloured graph is called rainbow if all its edges have distinct colours. The study of rainbow subgraphs goes back to the work of Euler on Latin squares and has been the focus of extensive research ever since. Many conjectures in this area roughly say that “every edge coloured graph of a certain type contains a rainbow matching...

An n-queens configuration is a placement of n mutually non-attacking queens on an n×n\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$n\times n$$\end{document} chessboar...

In this paper we study the fundamental problem of finding small dense subgraphs in a given graph. For a real number $s>2$, we prove that every graph on $n$ vertices with average degree at least $d$ contains a subgraph of average degree at least $s$ on at most $nd^{-\frac{s}{s-2}}(\log d)^{O_s(1)}$ vertices. This is optimal up to the polylogarithmic...

A chordal graph is a graph with no induced cycles of length at least $4$. Let $f(n,m)$ be the maximal integer such that every graph with $n$ vertices and $m$ edges has a chordal subgraph with at least $f(n,m)$ edges. In 1985 Erd\H{o}s and Laskar posed the problem of estimating $f(n,m)$. In the late '80s, Erd\H{o}s, Gy\'arf\'as, Ordman and Zalcstein...

In 1994, Erdős, Gyárfás and Łuczak posed the following problem: given disjoint vertex sets V1,…,Vn of size k, with exactly one edge between any pair Vi,Vj, how large can n be such that there will always be an independent transversal? They showed that the maximal n is at most (1+o(1))k2, by providing an explicit construction with these parameters an...

In this paper we completely resolve the well-known problem of Erd\H{o}s and Sauer from 1975 which asks for the maximum number of edges an $n$-vertex graph can have without containing a $k$-regular subgraph, for some fixed integer $k\geq 3$. We prove that any $n$-vertex graph with average degree at least $C_k\log \log n$ contains a $k$-regular subgr...

In 1974, Erdős posed the following problem. Given an oriented graph H , determine or estimate the maximum possible number of H -free orientations of an n -vertex graph. When H is a tournament, the answer was determined precisely for sufficiently large n by Alon and Yuster. In general, when the underlying undirected graph of H contains a cycle, one...

A Latin square of order n n is an n × n n \times n array filled with n n symbols such that each symbol appears only once in every row or column and a transversal is a collection of cells which do not share the same row, column or symbol. The study of Latin squares goes back more than 200 years to the work of Euler. One of the most famous open probl...

One of the most classical results in extremal set theory is Sperner's theorem, which says that the largest antichain in the Boolean lattice 2[n] has size Θ(2nn). Motivated by an old problem of Erdős on the growth of infinite Sidon sequences, in this note we study the growth rate of maximum infinite antichains. Using the well known Kraft's inequalit...

For a positive integer $t$, let $F_t$ denote the graph of the $t\times t$ grid. Motivated by a 50-year-old conjecture of Erd\H{o}s about Tur\'{a}n numbers of $r$-degenerate graphs, we prove that there exists a constant $C=C(t)$ such that $\mathrm{ex}(n,F_t)\leq Cn^{3/2}$. This bound is tight up to the value of $C$. One of the interesting ingredient...

For positive integers $s,t,r$, let $K_{s,t}^{(r)}$ denote the $r$-uniform hypergraph whose vertex set is the union of pairwise disjoint sets $X,Y_1,\dots,Y_t$, where $|X| = s$ and $|Y_1| = \dots = |Y_t| = r-1$, and whose edge set is $\{\{x\} \cup Y_i: x \in X, 1\leq i\leq t\}$. The study of the Tur\'an function of $K_{s,t}^{(r)}$ received considera...

In this paper we prove several results on Ramsey numbers $R(H,F)$ for a fixed graph $H$ and a large graph $F$, in particular for $F = K_n$. These results extend earlier work of Erd\H{o}s, Faudree, Rousseau and Schelp and of Balister, Schelp and Simonovits on so-called Ramsey size-linear graphs. Among others, we show that if $H$ is a subdivision of...

We provide a short and self-contained proof of the classical result of Kostochka and of Thomason, ensuring that every graph of average degree $d$ has a complete minor of order $d/\sqrt{\log d}$.

An $n$-queens configuration is a placement of $n$ mutually non-attacking queens on an $n\times n$ chessboard. The $n$-queens completion problem, introduced by Nauck in 1850, is to decide whether a given partial configuration can be completed to an $n$-queens configuration. In this paper, we study an extremal aspect of this question, namely: how sma...

The following very natural problem was raised by Chung and Erdős in the early 80's and has since been repeated a number of times. What is the minimum of the Turán number ex(n,H) among all r-graphs H with a fixed number of edges? Their actual focus was on an equivalent and perhaps even more natural question which asks what is the largest size of an...

Graph partitioning, or the dividing of a graph into two or more parts based on certain conditions, arises naturally throughout discrete mathematics, and problems of this kind have been studied extensively. In the 1990s, Ando conjectured that the vertices of every cubic graph can be partitioned into two parts that induce isomorphic subgraphs. Using...

Motivated by a longstanding conjecture of Thomassen, we study how large the average degree of a graph needs to be to imply that it contains a C4-free subgraph with average degree at least t. Kühn and Osthus showed that an average degree bound which is double exponential in t is sufficient. We give a short proof of this bound, before reducing it to...