Hypergraph independence bounds: from maximum degree to average degree

We prove a transfer theorem for hereditary classes of $(r+1)$-uniform hypergraphs. Let $\mathcal H$ be such a class, and for $H\in\mathcal H$ write $\Delta(H)$ and $d(H)$ for the maximum degree and average degree of $H$, respectively. We show that, for every nearly logarithmic function $f$ in the sense defined below, a maximum-degree lower bound for the independence number of the form $$\alpha(H)\ge (1-o(1))\frac{f(\Delta(H))}{\Delta(H)^{1/r}}|V(H)| \qquad\text{as }\Delta(H)\to\infty$$ for all $H\in\mathcal H$ implies the corresponding average-degree lower bound $$\alpha(H)\ge (1-o(1))\frac{f(d(H))}{d(H)^{1/r}}|V(H)| \qquad\text{as }d(H)\to\infty .$$ We combine this transfer theorem with known coloring and fractional-coloring bounds to obtain consequences for graphs excluding a fixed cycle, graphs with bounded clique number, locally $q$-colorable graphs, and locally sparse uniform hypergraphs.