Sam Mattheus

DISCLAIMER: Due to an error in the literature, we cannot be sure that the conclusions drawn in this paper are correct. The goal of this note is to connect some interesting results in the literature on algebraic graph theory and finite…

A set of edges $\Gamma$ of a graph $G$ is an edge dominating set if every edge of $G$ intersects at least one edge of $\Gamma$, and the edge domination number $\gamma_e(G)$ is the smallest size of an edge dominating set. Expanding on work…

We provide two novel constructions of $r$ edge-disjoint $K_{k+1}$-free graphs on the same vertex set, each of which has the property that every small induced subgraph contains a complete graph on $k$ vertices. The main novelty of our…

The investigation into large families of non-opposite flags in finite spherical buildings has been a recent addition to a long line of research in extremal combinatorics, extending classical results in vector and polar spaces. This line of…

For a field $\mathbb{F}$ and integers $d$ and $k$, a set ${\cal A} \subseteq \mathbb{F}^d$ is called $k$-nearly orthogonal if its members are non-self-orthogonal and every $k+1$ vectors of ${\cal A}$ include an orthogonal pair. We prove…

For a $k$-uniform hypergraph $F$ and a positive integer $n$, the Ramsey number $r(F,n)$ denotes the minimum $N$ such that every $N$-vertex $F$-free $k$-uniform hypergraph contains an independent set of $n$ vertices. A hypergraph is…

We continue our investigation of Erd\H{o}s-Ko-Rado (EKR) sets of flags in spherical buildings. In previous work, we used the theory of buildings and Iwahori-Hecke algebras to obtain upper bounds on their size. As the next step towards the…

Building on recent work of Mattheus and Verstra\"ete, we establish a general connection between Ramsey numbers of the form $r(F,t)$ for $F$ a fixed graph and a variant of the Zarankiewicz problem asking for the maximum number of 1s in an…

We use techniques from algebraic and extremal combinatorics to derive upper bounds on the number of independent sets in several (hyper)graphs arising from finite geometry. In this way, we obtain asymptotically sharp upper bounds for partial…

For integers $s,t \geq 2$, the Ramsey numbers $r(s,t)$ denote the minimum $N$ such that every $N$-vertex graph contains either a clique of order $s$ or an independent set of order $t$. In this paper we prove \[ r(4,t) =…

Given positive integers $e_1,e_2$, let $X_i$ denote the set of $e_i$-dimensional subspaces of a fixed finite vector space $V=(\mathbb{F}_q)^{e_1+e_2}$. Let $Y_i$ be a non-empty subset of $X_i$ and let $\alpha_i=|Y_i|/|X_i|$. We give a…

We extend the original cylinder conjecture on point sets in affine three-dimensional space to the more general framework of divisible linear codes over $\mathbb{F}_q$ and their classification. Through a mix of linear programming,…

We provide a new family of $K_k$-free pseudorandom graphs with edge density $\Theta(n^{-1/(k-1)})$, matching a recent construction due to Bishnoi, Ihringer and Pepe. As in the former result, the idea is to use large subgraphs of polarity…

A new construction for moderate density parity-check (MDPC) codes using finite geometry is proposed. We design a parity-check matrix for this family of binary codes as the concatenation of two matrices: the incidence matrix between points…

In this paper, oppositeness in spherical buildings is used to define an EKR-problem for flags in projective and polar spaces. A novel application of the theory of buildings and Iwahori-Hecke algebras is developed to prove sharp upper bounds…

In this short note we construct a spectral, non-tiling set of size $2p$ in $(\mathbb{Z}/p\mathbb{Z})^4$, $p$ odd prime. This example complements a previous counterexample in [arXiv:1509.01090], which existed only for $p \equiv 3 \pmod{4}$.…

We prove that a minimal $t$-fold blocking set in a finite projective plane of order $n$ has cardinality at most \[\frac{1}{2} n\sqrt{4tn - (3t + 1)(t - 1)} + \frac{1}{2} (t - 1)n + t.\] This is the first general upper bound on the size of…

Let $\perp$ be a unitary polarity of a finite projective plane $\pi$ of order $q^2$. The unitary polarity graph is the graph with vertex set the points of $\pi$ where two vertices $x$ and $y$ are adjacent if $x \in y^\perp$. We show that a…

We investigate the independence number of two graphs constructed from a polarity of $\mathrm{PG}(2,q)$. For the first graph under consideration, the Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi graph $ER_q$, we provide an improvement on the known lower bounds on its…