English

Structure theorem for U5-free tournaments

Combinatorics 2014-06-26 v2

Abstract

Let U5U_5 be the tournament with vertices v1v_1, ..., v5v_5 such that v2v1v_2 \rightarrow v_1, and vivjv_i \rightarrow v_j if ji1j-i \equiv 1, 2(mod5)2 \pmod{5} and i,j1,2{i,j} \neq {1,2}. In this paper we describe the tournaments which do not have U5U_5 as a subtournament. Specifically, we show that if a tournament GG is "prime"---that is, if there is no subset XV(G)X \subseteq V(G), 1<X<V(G)1 < |X| < |V(G)|, such that for all vV(G)\Xv \in V(G) \backslash X, either vxv \rightarrow x for all xXx \in X or xvx \rightarrow v for all xXx \in X---then GG is U5U_5-free if and only if either GG is a specific tournament TnT_n or V(G)V(G) can be partitioned into sets XX, YY, ZZ such that XYX \cup Y, YZY \cup Z, and ZXZ \cup X are transitive. From the prime U5U_5-free tournaments we can construct all the U5U_5-free tournaments. We use the theorem to show that every U5U_5-free tournament with nn vertices has a transitive subtournament with at least nlog32n^{\log_3 2} vertices, and that this bound is tight.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1208.0398,
  title  = {Structure theorem for U5-free tournaments},
  author = {Gaku Liu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1208.0398},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

15 pages, 1 figure. Changes from previous version: Added a section; added the definitions of v, A, and B to the main proof; general edits

R2 v1 2026-06-21T21:45:05.680Z