English

Intersecting families, signed sets, and injection

Combinatorics 2019-12-24 v1

Abstract

Let k,r,n1k, r, n \geq 1 be integers, and let §n,k,r\S_{n, k, r} be the family of rr-signed kk-sets on [n]={1,,n}[n] = \{1, \dots, n\} given by Sn,k,r={{(x1,a1),,(xk,ak)}:{x1,,xk}([n]k),a1,,ak[r]}. \mathcal{S}_{n, k, r} = \Big\{\{(x_1, a_1), \dots, (x_k, a_k)\}: \{x_1, \dots, x_k\} \in \binom{[n]}{k}, a_1, \dots, a_k \in [r] \Big\}. A family A§n,k,r\mathcal{A} \subseteq \S_{n, k, r} is \emph{intersecting} if A,BAA, B \in \mathcal{A} implies ABA \cap B \not= \emptyset. A well-known result (first stated by Meyer and proved using different methods by Deza and Frankl, and Bollob\'as and Leader) states that if ASn,k,r\mathcal{A} \subseteq \mathcal{S}_{n, k, r} is intersecting, r2r \geq 2 and 1kn1 \leq k \leq n, then Ark1(n1k1).|\mathcal{A}| \leq r^{k-1}\binom{n-1}{k - 1}. We provide a proof of this result by injection (in the same spirit as Frankl and F\"uredi's and Hurlbert and Kamat's injective proofs of the Erd\H{o}s--Ko--Rado Theorem, and Frankl's and Hurlbert and Kamat's injective proofs of the Hilton--Milner Theorem) whenever r2r \geq 2 and 1kn/21 \leq k \leq n/2, leaving open only some cases when knk \leq n.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1912.10324,
  title  = {Intersecting families, signed sets, and injection},
  author = {Carl Feghali},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1912.10324},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

7 pages; differs from the journal version in that reference 7 has been added

R2 v1 2026-06-23T12:53:31.202Z