English

Saturation of 0-1 Matrices

Combinatorics 2025-03-06 v1

Abstract

A 0-1 matrix MM contains a 0-1 matrix PP if MM has a submatrix PP' which can be turned into PP by changing some of the ones to zeroes. Matrix MM is PP-saturated if MM does not contain PP, but any matrix MM' derived from MM by changing a zero to a one must contain PP. The saturation function sat(n,P)sat(n,P) is defined as the minimum number of ones of an n×nn \times n PP-saturated 0-1 matrix. Fulek and Keszegh showed that each pattern PP has sat(n,P)=O(1)sat(n,P) = O(1) or sat(n,P)=Θ(n)sat(n,P) = \Theta(n). This leads to the natural problem of classifying forbidden 0-1 matrices according to whether they have linear or bounded saturation functions. Some progress has been made on this problem: multiple infinite families of matrices with bounded saturation function and other families with linear saturation function have been identified. We answer this question for all patterns with at most four ones, as well as several specific patterns with more ones, including multiple new infinite families. We also consider the effects of certain matrix operations, including the Kronecker product and insertion of empty rows and columns. Additionally, we consider the simpler case of fixing one dimension, extending results of (Fulek and Keszegh, 2021) and (Berendsohn, 2021). We also generalize some results to dd-dimensional saturation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2503.03193,
  title  = {Saturation of 0-1 Matrices},
  author = {Andrew Brahms and Alan Duan and Jesse Geneson and Jacob Greene},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.03193},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

41 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-28T22:07:21.763Z