English

Upper bounds on diagonal Ramsey numbers [after Campos, Griffiths, Morris, and Sahasrabudhe]

Combinatorics 2024-12-23 v2

Abstract

Ramsey's theorem states that if NN is sufficiently large, then no matter how one colors the edges among NN vertices with two colors, there are always kk vertices spanning edges in only one color. Given this theorem, it is natural to ask ``how large is sufficiently large?'' Ramsey's original proof showed that N=k!N=k! is sufficient, and five years later Erd\H{o}s and Szekeres improved this bound to N=4kN=4^k. And then progress stalled for almost 90 years. In this survey, I present the history of the problem and discuss some of the ideas used in the recent breakthrough of Campos--Griffiths--Morris--Sahasrabudhe, who proved that N=3.993kN=3.993^k is sufficient. In addition, I discuss the subsequent work of Balister, Bollob\'as, Campos, Griffiths, Hurley, Morris, Sahasrabudhe, and Tiba, who gave an alternative, and more conceptual, proof.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2411.09321,
  title  = {Upper bounds on diagonal Ramsey numbers [after Campos, Griffiths, Morris, and Sahasrabudhe]},
  author = {Yuval Wigderson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.09321},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

Expository paper accompanying a Bourbaki seminar talk (November 2024, expos\'e number 1230). 48 pages. Second version includes the follow-up of Balister et al