In this note, we give a precise description of the limiting empirical spectral distribution for the non-backtracking matrices for an Erdős-Rényi graph $G(n,p)$ assuming $np/\log n$ tends to infinity. We show that derandomizing part of the non-backtracking random matrix simplifies the spectrum considerably, and then, we use Tao and Vu’s replacement principle and the Bauer-Fike theorem to show that the partly derandomized spectrum is, in fact, very close to the original spectrum.

A graph is called $k$-critical if its chromatic number is $k$ but every proper subgraph has chromatic number less than $k$. An old and important problem in graph theory asks to determine the maximum number of edges in an $n$-vertex $k$-critical graph. This is widely open for every integer $k\geq 4$. Using a structural characterisation of Greenwell and Lovász and an extremal result of Simonovits, Stiebitz proved in 1987 that for $k\geq 4$ and sufficiently large $n$, this maximum number is less than the number of edges in the $n$-vertex balanced complete $(k-2)$-partite graph. In this paper, we obtain the first improvement in the above result in the past 35 years. Our proofs combine arguments from extremal graph theory as well as some structural analysis. A key lemma we use indicates a partial structure in dense $k$-critical graphs, which may be of independent interest.

In this paper we study a variation of the random $k$-SAT problem, called polarised random $k$-SAT, which contains both the classical random $k$-SAT model and the random version of monotone $k$-SAT another well-known NP-complete version of SAT. In this model there is a polarisation parameter $p$, and in half of the clauses each variable occurs negated with probability $p$ and pure otherwise, while in the other half the probabilities are interchanged. For $p=1/2$ we get the classical random $k$-SAT model, and at the other extreme we have the fully polarised model where $p=0$, or 1. Here there are only two types of clauses: clauses where all $k$ variables occur pure, and clauses where all $k$ variables occur negated. That is, for $p=0$, and $p=1$, we get an instance of random monotone $k$-SAT.

We show that the threshold of satisfiability does not decrease as $p$ moves away from $\frac{1}{2}$ and thus that the satisfiability threshold for polarised random $k$-SAT with $p\neq \frac{1}{2}$ is an upper bound on the threshold for random $k$-SAT. Hence the satisfiability threshold for random monotone $k$-SAT is at least as large as for random $k$-SAT, and we conjecture that asymptotically, for a fixed $k$, the two thresholds coincide.

Given $\alpha \gt 0$ and an integer $\ell \geq 5$, we prove that every sufficiently large $3$-uniform hypergraph $H$ on $n$ vertices in which every two vertices are contained in at least $\alpha n$ edges contains a copy of $C_\ell ^{-}$, a tight cycle on $\ell$ vertices minus one edge. This improves a previous result by Balogh, Clemen, and Lidický.

We show that the size-Ramsey number of the $\sqrt{n} \times \sqrt{n}$ grid graph is $O(n^{5/4})$, improving a previous bound of $n^{3/2 + o(1)}$ by Clemens, Miralaei, Reding, Schacht, and Taraz.

We study the problem of finding the root vertex in large growing networks. We prove that it is possible to construct confidence sets of size independent of the number of vertices in the network that contain the root vertex with high probability in various models of random networks. The models include uniform random recursive dags and uniform Cooper-Frieze random graphs.

We show that for a fixed $q$, the number of $q$-ary $t$-error correcting codes of length $n$ is at most $2^{(1 + o(1)) H_q(n,t)}$ for all $t \leq (1 - q^{-1})n - 2\sqrt{n \log n}$, where $H_q(n, t) = q^n/ V_q(n,t)$ is the Hamming bound and $V_q(n,t)$ is the cardinality of the radius $t$ Hamming ball. This proves a conjecture of Balogh, Treglown, and Wagner, who showed the result for $t = o(n^{1/3} (\log n)^{-2/3})$.

We extend a recent argument of Kahn, Narayanan and Park ((2021) Proceedings of the AMS 149 3201–3208) about the threshold for the appearance of the square of a Hamilton cycle to other spanning structures. In particular, for any spanning graph, we give a sufficient condition under which we may determine its threshold. As an application, we find the threshold for a set of cyclically ordered copies of $C_4$ that span the entire vertex set, so that any two consecutive copies overlap in exactly one edge and all overlapping edges are disjoint. This answers a question of Frieze. We also determine the threshold for edge-overlapping spanning $K_r$-cycles.

We prove that if a unimodular random graph is almost surely planar and has finite expected degree, then it has a combinatorial embedding into the plane which is also unimodular. This implies the claim in the title immediately by a theorem of Angel, Hutchcroft, Nachmias and Ray [2]. Our unimodular embedding also implies that all the dichotomy results of [2] about unimodular maps extend in the one-ended case to unimodular random planar graphs.

Alweiss, Lovett, Wu, and Zhang introduced $q$-spread hypergraphs in their breakthrough work regarding the sunflower conjecture, and since then $q$-spread hypergraphs have been used to give short proofs of several outstanding problems in probabilistic combinatorics. A variant of $q$-spread hypergraphs was implicitly used by Kahn, Narayanan, and Park to determine the threshold for when a square of a Hamiltonian cycle appears in the random graph $G_{n,p}$. In this paper, we give a common generalization of the original notion of $q$-spread hypergraphs and the variant used by Kahn, Narayanan, and Park.

Which patterns must a two-colouring of $K_n$ contain if each vertex has at least $\varepsilon n$ red and $\varepsilon n$ blue neighbours? We show that when $\varepsilon \gt 1/4$, $K_n$ must contain a complete subgraph on $\Omega (\log n)$ vertices where one of the colours forms a balanced complete bipartite graph.

When $\varepsilon \leq 1/4$, this statement is no longer true, as evidenced by the following colouring $\chi$ of $K_n$. Divide the vertex set into $4$ parts nearly equal in size as $V_1,V_2,V_3, V_4$, and let the blue colour class consist of the edges between $(V_1,V_2)$, $(V_2,V_3)$, $(V_3,V_4)$, and the edges contained inside $V_2$ and inside $V_3$. Surprisingly, we find that this obstruction is unique in the following sense. Any two-colouring of $K_n$ in which each vertex has at least $\varepsilon n$ red and $\varepsilon n$ blue neighbours (with $\varepsilon \gt 0$) contains a vertex set $S$ of order $\Omega _{\varepsilon }(\log n)$ on which one colour class forms a balanced complete bipartite graph, or which has the same colouring as $\chi$.

We study the problem of determining the minimum number $f(n,k,d)$ of affine subspaces of codimension $d$ that are required to cover all points of $\mathbb{F}_2^n\setminus \{\vec{0}\}$ at least $k$ times while covering the origin at most $k - 1$ times. The case $k=1$ is a classic result of Jamison, which was independently obtained by Brouwer and Schrijver for $d = 1$. The value of $f(n,1,1)$ also follows from a well-known theorem of Alon and Füredi about coverings of finite grids in affine spaces over arbitrary fields. Here we determine the value of this function exactly in various ranges of the parameters. In particular, we prove that for $k\geq 2^{n-d-1}$ we have $f(n,k,d)=2^d k-\left\lfloor{\frac{k}{2^{n-d}}}\right\rfloor$, while for $n \gt 2^{2^d k-k-d+1}$ we have $f(n,k,d)=n + 2^d k -d-2$, and obtain asymptotic results between these two ranges. While previous work in this direction has primarily employed the polynomial method, we prove our results through more direct combinatorial and probabilistic arguments, and also exploit a connection to coding theory.

We prove a new sufficient pair degree condition for tight Hamiltonian cycles in $3$-uniform hypergraphs that (asymptotically) improves the best known pair degree condition due to Rödl, Ruciński, and Szemerédi. For graphs, Chvátal characterised all those sequences of integers for which every pointwise larger (or equal) degree sequence guarantees the existence of a Hamiltonian cycle. A step towards Chvátal’s theorem was taken by Pósa, who improved on Dirac’s tight minimum degree condition for Hamiltonian cycles by showing that a certain weaker condition on the degree sequence of a graph already yields a Hamiltonian cycle.

In this work, we take a similar step towards a full characterisation of all pair degree matrices that ensure the existence of tight Hamiltonian cycles in $3$-uniform hypergraphs by proving a $3$-uniform analogue of Pósa’s result. In particular, our result strengthens the asymptotic version of the result by Rödl, Ruciński, and Szemerédi.

We extend the notion of universal graphs to a geometric setting. A geometric graph is universal for a class $\mathcal H$ of planar graphs if it contains an embedding, that is, a crossing-free drawing, of every graph in $\mathcal H$. Our main result is that there exists a geometric graph with $n$ vertices and $O\!\left(n \log n\right)$ edges that is universal for $n$-vertex forests; this generalises a well-known result by Chung and Graham, which states that there exists an (abstract) graph with $n$ vertices and $O\!\left(n \log n\right)$ edges that contains every $n$-vertex forest as a subgraph. The upper bound of $O\!\left(n \log n\right)$ edges cannot be improved, even if more than $n$ vertices are allowed. We also prove that every $n$-vertex convex geometric graph that is universal for $n$-vertex outerplanar graphs has a near-quadratic number of edges, namely $\Omega _h(n^{2-1/h})$, for every positive integer $h$; this almost matches the trivial $O(n^2)$ upper bound given by the $n$-vertex complete convex geometric graph. Finally, we prove that there exists an $n$-vertex convex geometric graph with $n$ vertices and $O\!\left(n \log n\right)$ edges that is universal for $n$-vertex caterpillars.

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 determined the value of $f(n,n^2/4+1)$ and made a conjecture on the value of $f(n,n^2/3+1)$. In this paper we prove this conjecture and answer the question of Erdős and Laskar, determining $f(n,m)$ asymptotically for all $m$ and exactly for $m \leq n^2/3+1$.

For a fixed infinite graph $H$, we study the largest density of a monochromatic subgraph isomorphic to $H$ that can be found in every two-colouring of the edges of $K_{\mathbb{N}}$. This is called the Ramsey upper density of $H$ and was introduced by Erdős and Galvin in a restricted setting, and by DeBiasio and McKenney in general. Recently [4], the Ramsey upper density of the infinite path was determined. Here, we find the value of this density for all locally finite graphs $H$ up to a factor of 2, answering a question of DeBiasio and McKenney. We also find the exact density for a wide class of bipartite graphs, including all locally finite forests. Our approach relates this problem to the solution of an optimisation problem for continuous functions. We show that, under certain conditions, the density depends only on the chromatic number of $H$, the number of components of $H$ and the expansion ratio $|N(I)|/|I|$ of the independent sets of $H$.

The notion of cross-intersecting set pair system of size $m$, $ (\{A_i\}_{i=1}^m, \{B_i\}_{i=1}^m )$ with $A_i\cap B_i=\emptyset$ and $A_i\cap B_j\ne \emptyset$, was introduced by Bollobás and it became an important tool of extremal combinatorics. His classical result states that $m\le\binom{a+b}{a}$ if $|A_i|\le a$ and $|B_i|\le b$ for each $i$. Our central problem is to see how this bound changes with the additional condition $|A_i\cap B_j|=1$ for $i\ne j$. Such a system is called $1$-cross-intersecting. We show that these systems are related to perfect graphs, clique partitions of graphs, and finite geometries. We prove that their maximum size is

• at least $5^{n/2}$ for $n$ even, $a=b=n$,

• equal to $\bigl (\lfloor \frac{n}{2}\rfloor +1\bigr )\bigl (\lceil \frac{n}{2}\rceil +1\bigr )$ if $a=2$ and $b=n\ge 4$,

• at most $|\cup _{i=1}^m A_i|$,

• asymptotically $n^2$ if $\{A_i\}$ is a linear hypergraph ($|A_i\cap A_j|\le 1$ for $i\ne j$),

• asymptotically ${1\over 2}n^2$ if $\{A_i\}$ and $\{B_i\}$ are both linear hypergraphs.

Given a graph $G$ and an integer $\ell \ge 2$, we denote by $\alpha _{\ell }(G)$ the maximum size of a $K_{\ell }$-free subset of vertices in $V(G)$. A recent question of Nenadov and Pehova asks for determining the best possible minimum degree conditions forcing clique-factors in $n$-vertex graphs $G$ with $\alpha _{\ell }(G) = o(n)$, which can be seen as a Ramsey–Turán variant of the celebrated Hajnal–Szemerédi theorem. In this paper we find the asymptotical sharp minimum degree threshold for $K_r$-factors in $n$-vertex graphs $G$ with $\alpha _\ell (G)=n^{1-o(1)}$ for all $r\ge \ell \ge 2$.

A random two-cell embedding of a given graph $G$ is obtained by choosing a random local rotation around every vertex. We analyse the expected number of faces of such an embedding, which is equivalent to studying its average genus. In 1991, Stahl [5] proved that the expected number of faces in a random embedding of an arbitrary graph of order $n$ is at most $n\log (n)$. While there are many families of graphs whose expected number of faces is $\Theta (n)$, none are known where the expected number would be super-linear. This led the authors of [1] to conjecture that there is a linear upper bound. In this note we confirm their conjecture by proving that for any $n$-vertex multigraph, the expected number of faces in a random two-cell embedding is at most $2n\log (2\mu )$, where $\mu$ is the maximum edge-multiplicity. This bound is best possible up to a constant factor.