English

Generalized Tuza's conjecture for random hypergraphs

Combinatorics 2024-05-15 v2

Abstract

A celebrated conjecture of Tuza states that in any finite graph the minimum size of a cover of triangles by edges is at most twice the maximum size of a set of edge-disjoint triangles. For an rr-uniform hypergraph (rr-graph) GG, let τ(G)\tau(G) be the minimum size of a cover of edges by (r1)(r-1)-sets of vertices, and let ν(G)\nu(G) be the maximum size of a set of edges pairwise intersecting in fewer than r1r-1 vertices. Aharoni and Zerbib proposed the following generalization of Tuza's conjecture: For any r-graph Gτ(G)/ν(G)(r+1)/2. \text{For any $r$-graph $G$, $\tau(G)/\nu(G) \leq \lceil(r+1)/2\rceil$.} Let Hr(n,p)H_r(n,p) be the uniformly random rr-graph on nn vertices. We show that, for r{3,4,5}r \in \{3, 4, 5\} and any p=p(n)p = p(n), Hr(n,p)H_r(n,p) satisfies the Aharoni-Zerbib conjecture with high probability (i.e., with probability approaching 1 as nn \rightarrow \infty). We also show that there is a C<1C < 1 such that, for any r6r \geq 6 and any p=p(n)p = p(n), τ(Hr(n,p))/ν(Hr(n,p))Cr\tau(H_r(n, p))/\nu(H_r(n, p)) \leq C r with high probability. Furthermore, we may take C<1/2+εC < 1/2 + \varepsilon, for any ε>0\varepsilon > 0, by restricting to sufficiently large rr (depending on ε\varepsilon).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2204.04568,
  title  = {Generalized Tuza's conjecture for random hypergraphs},
  author = {Abdul Basit and David Galvin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2204.04568},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

32 pages including references and appendix; minor corrections throughout the article; accepted to SIAM J. Discrete Math

R2 v1 2026-06-24T10:43:25.089Z