English

Optimal bounds for the colorful fractional Helly theorem

Combinatorics 2020-12-02 v2

Abstract

The well known fractional Helly theorem and colorful Helly theorem can be merged into the so called colorful fractional Helly theorem. It states: For every α(0,1]\alpha \in (0, 1] and every non-negative integer dd, there is βcol=βcol(α,d)(0,1]\beta_{col} = \beta_{col}(\alpha, d) \in (0, 1] with the following property. Let F1,,Fd+1\mathcal{F}_1, \dots, \mathcal{F}_{d+1} be finite nonempty families of convex sets in Rd\mathbb{R}^d of sizes n1,,nd+1n_1, \dots, n_{d+1} respectively. If at least αn1n2nd+1\alpha n_1 n_2 \cdots n_{d+1} of the colorful (d+1)(d+1)-tuples have a nonempty intersection, then there is i[d+1]i \in [d+1] such that Fi\mathcal{F}_i contains a subfamily of size at least βcolni\beta_{col} n_i with a nonempty intersection. (A colorful (d+1)(d+1)-tuple is a (d+1)(d+1)-tuple (F1,,Fd+1)(F_1, \dots , F_{d+1}) such that FiF_i belongs to Fi\mathcal{F}_i for every ii.) The colorful fractional Helly theorem was first stated and proved by B\'ar\'any, Fodor, Montejano, Oliveros, and P\'or in 2014 with βcol=α/(d+1)\beta_{col} = \alpha/(d+1). In 2017 Kim proved the theorem with better function βcol\beta_{col}, which in particular tends to 11 when α\alpha tends to 11. Kim also conjectured what is the optimal bound for βcol(α,d)\beta_{col}(\alpha, d) and provided the upper bound example for the optimal bound. The conjectured bound coincides with the optimal bounds for the (non-colorful) fractional Helly theorem proved independently by Eckhoff and Kalai around 1984. We verify Kim's conjecture by extending Kalai's approach to the colorful scenario. Moreover, we obtain optimal bounds also in more general setting when we allow several sets of the same color.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2010.15765,
  title  = {Optimal bounds for the colorful fractional Helly theorem},
  author = {Denys Bulavka and Afshin Goodarzi and Martin Tancer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.15765},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

13 pages, 1 figure. The main technical result is extended to c colors, where c is a positive integer, in contrast to the previous version where we only allowed (d+1) colors. We added the acknowledgments

R2 v1 2026-06-23T19:45:12.010Z