English

Pure pairs. VI. Excluding an ordered tree

Combinatorics 2021-05-24 v2

Abstract

A pure pair in a graph GG is a pair (Z1,Z2)(Z_1,Z_2) of disjoint sets of vertices such that either every vertex in Z1Z_1 is adjacent to every vertex in Z2Z_2, or there are no edges between Z1Z_1 and Z2Z_2. With Maria Chudnovsky, we recently proved that, for every forest FF, every graph GG with at least two vertices that does not contain FF or its complement as an induced subgraph has a pure pair (Z1,Z2)(Z_1,Z_2) with Z1,Z2|Z_1|,|Z_2| linear in G|G|. Here we investigate what we can say about pure pairs in an {\em ordered} graph GG, when we exclude an ordered forest FF and its complement as induced subgraphs. Fox showed that there need not be a linear pure pair; but Pach and Tomon showed that if FF is a monotone path then there is a pure pair of size cG/logGc|G|/\log |G|. We generalise this to all ordered forests, at the cost of a slightly worse bound: we prove that, for every ordered forest FF, every ordered graph GG with at least two vertices that does not contain FF or its complement as an induced subgraph has a pure pair of size G1o(1)|G|^{1-o(1)}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2009.10671,
  title  = {Pure pairs. VI. Excluding an ordered tree},
  author = {Alex Scott and Paul Seymour and Sophie Spirkl},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2009.10671},
  year   = {2021}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T18:43:30.144Z