We show that the number of unit distances determined by n points in ℝ3 is O(n3/2), slightly improving the bound of Clarkson, Edelsbrunner, Guibas, Sharir and Welzl [5], established in 1990. The new proof uses the recently introduced polynomial partitioning technique of Guth and Katz [12]. While this paper was still in a draft stage, a similar proof of our main result was posted to the arXiv by Joshua Zahl [28].

We prove the following metric Ramsey theorem. For any connected graph G endowed with a linear order on its vertex set, there exists a graph R such that in every colouring of the t-sets of vertices of R it is possible to find a copy G* of G inside R satisfying:

• • distG*(x, y) = distR(x, y) for every x, y ∈ V(G*);

• • the colour of each t-set in G* depends only on the graph-distance metric induced in G by the ordered t-set.

Given a finite subset A of an abelian group G, we study the set k ∧ A of all sums of k distinct elements of A. In this paper, we prove that |k ∧ A| ≥ |A| for all k ∈ {2,. . .,|A| − 2}, unless k ∈ {2, |A| − 2} and A is a coset of an elementary 2-subgroup of G. Furthermore, we characterize those finite sets A ⊆ G for which |k ∧ A| = |A| for some k ∈ {2,. . .,|A| − 2}. This result answers a question of Diderrich. Our proof relies on an elementary property of proper edge-colourings of the complete graph.

A colouring of the vertices of a hypergraph is called conflict-free if each edge e of contains a vertex whose colour does not repeat in e. The smallest number of colours required for such a colouring is called the conflict-free chromatic number of , and is denoted by χCF(). Pach and Tardos proved that for an (2r − 1)-uniform hypergraph with m edges, χCF() is at most of the order of rm1/r log m, for fixed r and large m. They also raised the question whether a similar upper bound holds for r-uniform hypergraphs. In this paper we show that this is not necessarily the case. Furthermore, we provide lower and upper bounds on the minimum number of edges of an r-uniform simple hypergraph that is not conflict-free k-colourable.

In the present paper we prove a certain lemma about the structure of ‘lower level-sets of convolutions’, which are sets of the form {x ∈ ℤN : 1A * 1A(x) ≤ γ N} or of the form {x ∈ ℤN : 1A(x) < γ N}, where A is a subset of ℤN. One result we prove using this lemma is that if |A| = θ N and |A+A| ≤ (1 − ϵ)N, 0 < ϵ < 1, then this level-set contains an arithmetic progression of length at least Nc, c = c(θ, ϵ, γ) > 0. It is perhaps possible to obtain such a result using Green's arithmetic regularity lemma (in combination with some ideas of Bourgain [6]); however, our method of proof allows us to obtain non-tower-type quantitative dependence between the constant c and the parameters θ and ϵ. For various reasons (discussed in the paper) one might think, wrongly, that such results would only be possible for level-sets involving triple and higher convolutions.

Joint 2-adic complexity is a new important index of the cryptographic security formultisequences. In this paper, we extend the usual Fourier transform to the case ofmultisequences and derive an upper bound for the joint 2-adic complexity. Furthermore, forthe multisequences with pn-period, we discussthe relation between sequences and their Fourier coefficients. Based on the relation, wedetermine a lower bound for the number of multisequences with given joint 2-adiccomplexity.

For each poset H whose Hasse diagram is a tree of height k, we show that the largest size of a family of subsets of [n]={1,. . ., n} not containing H as an induced subposet is asymptotic to . This extends a result of Bukh [1], which in turn generalizes several known results including Sperner's theorem.

Scott conjectured in [6] that the class of graphs with no induced subdivision of a given graph is χ-bounded. We verify his conjecture for maximal triangle-free graphs.

Li, Nikiforov and Schelp [13] conjectured that any 2-edge coloured graph G with order n and minimum degree δ(G) > 3n/4 contains a monochromatic cycle of length ℓ, for all ℓ ∈ [4, ⌈n/2⌉]. We prove this conjecture for sufficiently large n and also find all 2-edge coloured graphs with δ(G)=3n/4 that do not contain all such cycles. Finally, we show that, for all δ>0 and n>n0(δ), if G is a 2-edge coloured graph of order n with δ(G) ≥ 3n/4, then one colour class either contains a monochromatic cycle of length at least (2/3+δ/2)n, or contains monochromatic cycles of all lengths ℓ ∈ [3, (2/3−δ)n].

We define a variant of the crossing number for an embedding of a graph G into ℝ3, and prove a lower bound on it which almost implies the classical crossing lemma. We also give sharp bounds on the rectilinear space crossing numbers of pseudo-random graphs.

A graph H is called common if the sum of the number of copies of H in a graph G and the number in the complement of G is asymptotically minimized by taking G to be a random graph. Extending a conjecture of Erdős, Burr and Rosta conjectured that every graph is common. Thomason disproved both conjectures by showing that K4 is not common. It is now known that in fact the common graphs are very rare. Answering a question of Sidorenko and of Jagger, Št'ovíček and Thomason from 1996 we show that the 5-wheel is common. This provides the first example of a common graph that is not three-colourable.

A tree T is said to be homogeneous if it is uniquely rooted and there exists an integer b ≥ 2, called the branching number of T, such that every t ∈ T has exactly b immediate successors. We study the behaviour of measurable events in probability spaces indexed by homogeneous trees.

Precisely, we show that for every integer b ≥ 2 and every integer n ≥ 1 there exists an integer q(b,n) with the following property. If T is a homogeneous tree with branching number b and {At:t ∈ T} is a family of measurable events in a probability space (Ω,Σ,μ) satisfying μ(At)≥ϵ>0 for every t ∈ T, then for every 0<θ<ϵ there exists a strong subtree S of T of infinite height, such that for every finite subset F of S of cardinality n ≥ 1 we haveIn fact, we can take q(b,n)= ((2b−1)2n−1−1)·(2b−2)−1. A finite version of this result is also obtained.

Taking the view that infinite plays are draws, we study Conwaynon-terminating games and non-losing strategies. These admit asharp coalgebraic presentation, where non-terminating games are seen as afinal coalgebra and game contructors, such as disjunctivesum, as final morphisms. We have shown, in a previous paper,that Conway’s theory of terminating games can be rephrased naturally in terms of game(pre)congruences. Namely, various conceptually independent notions ofequivalence can be defined and shown to coincide on Conway’sterminating games. These are the equivalence induced by the ordering on surrealnumbers, the contextual equivalence determined by observingwhat player has a winning strategy, Joyal’s categoricalequivalence, and, for impartial games, the denotationalequivalence induced by Grundy semantics. In this paper, wediscuss generalizations of such equivalences to non-terminating games andnon-losing strategies. The scenario is even more rich and intriguing inthis case. In particular, we investigate efficient characterizations of the contextualequivalence, and we introduce a category of fair strategies and acategory of fair pairs of strategies, both generalizing Joyal’s categoryof Conway games and winning strategies. Interestingly, the category of fair pairs capturesthe equivalence defined by Berlekamp, Conway, Guy on loopy games.

Let H be a graph on n vertices and let the blow-up graph G[H] be defined as follows. We replace each vertex vi of H by a cluster Ai and connect some pairs of vertices of Ai and Aj if (vi,vj) is an edge of the graph H. As usual, we define the edge density between Ai and Aj asWe study the following problem. Given densities γij for each edge (i,j) ∈ E(H), one has to decide whether there exists a blow-up graph G[H], with edge densities at least γij, such that one cannot choose a vertex from each cluster, so that the obtained graph is isomorphic to H, i.e., no H appears as a transversal in G[H]. We call dcrit(H) the maximal value for which there exists a blow-up graph G[H] with edge densities d(Ai,Aj)=dcrit(H) ((vi,vj) ∈ E(H)) not containing H in the above sense. Our main goal is to determine the critical edge density and to characterize the extremal graphs.

First, in the case of tree T we give an efficient algorithm to decide whether a given set of edge densities ensures the existence of a transversal T in the blow-up graph. Then we give general bounds on dcrit(H) in terms of the maximal degree. In connection with the extremal structure, the so-called star decomposition is proved to give the best construction for H-transversal-free blow-up graphs for several graph classes. Our approach applies algebraic graph-theoretical, combinatorial and probabilistic tools.

A detachment of a hypergraph is formed by splitting each vertex into one or more subvertices, and sharing the incident edges arbitrarily among the subvertices. For a given edge-coloured hypergraph , we prove that there exists a detachment such that the degree of each vertex and the multiplicity of each edge in (and each colour class of ) are shared fairly among the subvertices in (and each colour class of , respectively).

Let be a hypergraph with vertex partition {V1,. . .,Vn}, |Vi| = pi for 1 ≤ i ≤ n such that there are λi edges of size hi incident with every hi vertices, at most one vertex from each part for 1 ≤ i ≤ m (so no edge is incident with more than one vertex of a part). We use our detachment theorem to show that the obvious necessary conditions for to be expressed as the union 1 ∪ ··· ∪ k of k edge-disjoint factors, where for 1 ≤ i ≤ k, i is ri-regular, are also sufficient. Baranyai solved the case of h1 = ··· = hm, λ1 = ··· = λm = 1, p1 = ··· = pm, r1 = ··· = rk. Berge and Johnson (and later Brouwer and Tijdeman, respectively) considered (and solved, respectively) the case of hi = i, 1 ≤ i ≤ m, p1 = ··· = pm = λ1 = ··· = λm = r1 = ··· = rk = 1. We also extend our result to the case where each i is almost regular.

We study translations of dyadic first-order sentences into equalities between relationalexpressions. The proposed translation techniques (which work also in the conversedirection) exploit a graphical representation of formulae in a hybrid of the twoformalisms. A major enhancement relative to previous work is that we can cope with therelational complement construct and with the negation connective. Complementation ishandled by adopting a Smullyan-like uniform notation to classify and decompose relationalexpressions; negation is treated by means of a generalized graph-representation offormulae in ℒ+, and through a series of graph-transformation rules whichreflect the meaning of connectives and quantifiers.