English

Ordered unavoidable sub-structures in matchings and random matchings

Combinatorics 2024-04-25 v5

Abstract

An ordered matching of size nn is a graph on a linearly ordered vertex set VV, V=2n|V|=2n, consisting of nn pairwise disjoint edges. There are three different ordered matchings of size two on V={1,2,3,4}V=\{1,2,3,4\}: an alignment {1,2},{3,4}\{1,2\},\{3,4\}, a nesting {1,4},{2,3}\{1,4\},\{2,3\}, and a crossing {1,3},{2,4}\{1,3\},\{2,4\}. Accordingly, there are three basic homogeneous types of ordered matchings (with all pairs of edges arranged in the same way) which we call, respectively, lines, stacks, and waves. We prove an Erd\H{o}s-Szekeres type result guaranteeing in every ordered matching of size nn the presence of one of the three basic sub-structures of a given size. In particular, one of them must be of size at least n1/3n^{1/3}. We also investigate the size of each of the three sub-structures in a random ordered matching. Additionally, the former result is generalized to 33-uniform ordered matchings. Another type of unavoidable patterns we study are twins, that is, pairs of order-isomorphic, disjoint sub-matchings. By relating to a similar problem for permutations, we prove that the maximum size of twins that occur in every ordered matching of size nn is O(n2/3)O\left(n^{2/3}\right) and Ω(n3/5)\Omega\left(n^{3/5}\right). We conjecture that the upper bound is the correct order of magnitude and confirm it for almost all matchings. In fact, our results for twins are proved more generally for rr-multiple twins, r2r\ge2.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2210.14042,
  title  = {Ordered unavoidable sub-structures in matchings and random matchings},
  author = {Andrzej Dudek and Jarosław Grytczuk and Andrzej Ruciński},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2210.14042},
  year   = {2024}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T04:28:09.310Z