English

Long running times for hypergraph bootstrap percolation

Combinatorics 2022-10-25 v2

Abstract

Consider the hypergraph bootstrap percolation process in which, given a fixed rr-uniform hypergraph HH and starting with a given hypergraph G0G_0, at each step we add to G0G_0 all edges that create a new copy of HH. We are interested in maximising the number of steps that this process takes before it stabilises. For the case where H=Kr+1(r)H=K_{r+1}^{(r)} with r3r\geq3, we provide a new construction for G0G_0 that shows that the number of steps of this process can be of order Θ(nr)\Theta(n^r). This answers a recent question of Noel and Ranganathan. To demonstrate that different running times can occur, we also prove that, if HH is K4(3)K_4^{(3)} minus an edge, then the maximum possible running time is 2nlog2(n2)62n-\lfloor \log_2(n-2)\rfloor-6. However, if HH is K5(3)K_5^{(3)} minus an edge, then the process can run for Θ(n3)\Theta(n^3) steps.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2209.02015,
  title  = {Long running times for hypergraph bootstrap percolation},
  author = {Alberto Espuny Díaz and Barnabás Janzer and Gal Kronenberg and Joanna Lada},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.02015},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

Added two new results

R2 v1 2026-06-28T00:44:51.597Z