English

On the 2-colorability of random hypergraphs

Combinatorics 2020-11-11 v1 Statistical Mechanics Probability

Abstract

A 2-coloring of a hypergraph is a mapping from its vertices to a set of two colors such that no edge is monochromatic. Let Hk(n,m)H_k(n,m) be a random kk-uniform hypergraph on nn vertices formed by picking mm edges uniformly, independently and with replacement. It is easy to show that if rrc=2k1ln2(ln2)/2r \geq r_c = 2^{k-1} \ln 2 - (\ln 2) /2, then with high probability Hk(n,m=rn)H_k(n,m=rn) is not 2-colorable. We complement this observation by proving that if rrc1r \leq r_c - 1 then with high probability Hk(n,m=rn)H_k(n,m=rn) is 2-colorable.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2011.04809,
  title  = {On the 2-colorability of random hypergraphs},
  author = {Dimitris Achlioptas and Cristopher Moore},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2011.04809},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

This is an 18-year-old paper: it appeared in RANDOM 2002, but we neglected to post it on the arxiv and it is a bit hard to find outside paywalls. An enormous amount of progress has been made on this and related problems since then, but it might still be of interest as an example of using the second moment method to prove lower bounds on phase transitions in random combinatorial problems

R2 v1 2026-06-23T20:01:57.400Z