English

Lower bounds for the Tur\'an densities of daisies

Combinatorics 2023-03-27 v5

Abstract

For integers r3r \geq 3 and t2t \geq 2, an rr-uniform tt-daisy Drt\mathcal{D}^t_r is a family of (2tt)\binom{2t}{t} rr-element sets of the form {ST :TU, T=t}\{S \cup T \ : T\subset U, \ |T|=t \} for some sets S,US,U with S=rt|S|=r-t, U=2t|U|=2t and SU=S \cap U = \emptyset. It was conjectured by Bollob\'as, Leader and Malvenuto (and independently Bukh) that the Tur\'an densities of tt-daisies satisfy limrπ(Drt)=0\lim\limits_{r \to \infty} \pi(\mathcal{D}_r^t) = 0 for all t2t \geq 2; this has become a well-known problem, and it is still open for all values of tt. In this paper, we give lower bounds for the Tur\'an densities of rr-uniform tt-daisies. To do so, we introduce (and make some progress on) the following natural problem in additive combinatorics: for integers m2t4m \geq 2t \geq 4, what is the maximum cardinality g(m,t)g(m,t) of a subset RR of Z/mZ\mathbb{Z}/m\mathbb{Z} such that for any xZ/mZx \in \mathbb{Z}/m\mathbb{Z} and any 2t2t-element subset XX of Z/mZ\mathbb{Z}/m\mathbb{Z}, there are tt distinct elements of XX whose sum is not in the translate x+Rx+R? This is a slice-analogue of the extremal Hilbert cube problem considered by Gunderson and R\"odl and its generalization studied by Cilleruelo and Tesoro.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2204.08930,
  title  = {Lower bounds for the Tur\'an densities of daisies},
  author = {David Ellis and Dylan King},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2204.08930},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

11 pages. Minor changes made in response to comments of two anonymous referees