English

The Lubell bound for intersecting-union families

Combinatorics 2026-07-08 v1

Abstract

In a 2021 survey on Katona's circle method, Frankl conjectured that every family F2[n]\mathcal{F}\subseteq 2^{[n]} in which any two members intersect and no two members cover [n][n] satisfies the sharp Lubell-type bound FF(nF)1n+16. \sum_{F\in \mathcal{F}}\binom{n}{|F|}^{-1}\le \frac{n+1}{6}. This improves the earlier estimate n4\frac{n}{4} obtained by the circle method. In this paper, we prove Frankl's conjecture and determine all extremal families. Our proof replaces the cyclic permutation argument with a pp-biased measure framework on the Boolean lattice, and then integrates the resulting estimates over the full probability range. This continuous integration recovers the optimal coefficient 16\frac{1}{6}, whereas the discrete averaging inherent in the circle method yields only n4\frac{n}{4}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.07564,
  title  = {The Lubell bound for intersecting-union families},
  author = {Yongjiang Wu and Lihua Feng},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.07564},
  year   = {2026}
}

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7 pages