On the union of intersecting families

A family of sets is said to be \emph{intersecting} if any two sets in the family have nonempty intersection. In 1973, Erd\H{o}s raised the problem of determining the maximum possible size of a union of $r$ different intersecting families of $k$-element subsets of an $n$-element set, for each triple of integers $(n,k,r)$. We make progress on this problem, proving that for any fixed integer $r \geq 2$ and for any $k \leq (\tfrac{1}{2}-o(1))n$, if $X$ is an $n$-element set, and $\mathcal{F} = \mathcal{F}_1 \cup \mathcal{F}_2 \cup \ldots \cup \mathcal{F}_r$, where each $\mathcal{F}_i$ is an intersecting family of $k$-element subsets of $X$, then $|\mathcal{F}| \leq {n \choose k} - {n-r \choose k}$, with equality only if $\mathcal{F} = \{S \subset X:\ |S|=k,\ S \cap R \neq \emptyset\}$ for some $R \subset X$ with $|R|=r$. This is best possible up to the size of the $o(1)$ term, and improves a 1987 result of Frankl and F\"uredi, who obtained the same conclusion under the stronger hypothesis $k < (3-\sqrt{5})n/2$, in the case $r=2$. Our proof utilises an isoperimetric, influence-based method recently developed by Keller and the authors.