English

Conjectures on union-closed families of sets

Combinatorics 2024-09-25 v2

Abstract

A family of sets A\mathcal{A} is union-closed if it is finite and nonempty with member sets that are all finite and distinct (at least one of which is nonempty) and it satisfies the property X,YA    XYAX, Y \in \mathcal{A} \implies X \cup Y \in \mathcal{A}. Let (Sk)\binom{S}{k} be the set of all kk-element subsets of a set SS, and let [n]={1,2,,n}[n]=\{1,2,\cdots,n\} represent AAA\bigcup_{A \in \mathcal{A}}A. Further, let AB={AA  AB=B}\mathcal{A}_B=\{A\in\mathcal{A} \ | \ A \cap B = B\} and AB={AA  AB=}\mathcal{A}_{\underline{B}}=\{A\in\mathcal{A} \ | \ A \cap B = \emptyset\}. We consider, for any union-closed family A\mathcal{A}, the class of conjectures UCx ⁣: B([n]nx+1)  ABAB\textrm{UC}_x \colon \ \exists B \in \binom{[n]}{n-x+1} \ | \ |\mathcal{A}_B| \geq |\mathcal{A}_{\underline{B}}|, where x[n]x \in [n]. The extremal case x=nx=n is equivalent to the union-closed sets conjecture, also known as Frankl's conjecture, which states that there exists an element of [n][n] that is in at least A2\frac{|\mathcal{A}|}{2} member sets of A\mathcal{A}. We prove UCx\textrm{UC}_x for x[n3+1]x \in [\lceil \frac{n}{3} \rceil + 1], and also investigate two strengthenings of the union-closed sets conjecture.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2310.02482,
  title  = {Conjectures on union-closed families of sets},
  author = {Christopher Bouchard},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.02482},
  year   = {2024}
}