Related papers: Minimal blocking sets in PG(n,2) and covering grou…

A strong blocking set in a finite projective space is a set of points that intersects each hyperplane in a spanning set. We provide a new graph theoretic construction of such sets: combining constant-degree expanders with asymptotically…

Let $G$ be a finite, connected graph of order of at least 2, with vertex set $V(G)$ and edge set $E (G)$. A set $S$ of vertices of the graph $G$ is a doubly resolving set for $G$ if every two distinct vertices of $G$ are doubly resolved by…

Any finite simple graph $G = (V,E)$ can be represented by a collection $\mathscr{C}$ of subsets of $V$ such that $uv\in E$ if and only if $u$ and $v$ appear together in an odd number of sets in $\mathscr{C}$. Let $c_2(G)$ denote the minimum…

A strong triangle blocking arrangement is a geometric arrangement of some line segments in a triangle with certain intersection properties. It turns out that they are closely related to blocking sets. Our aim in this paper is to prove a…

Domination of grids has been proved to be a demanding task and with the addition of independence it becomes more challenging. It is known that no grid with $m,n \geq 5$ has an efficient dominating set, also called perfect code, that is, an…

The problem of calculating exact lower bounds for the number of $k$-faces of $d$-polytopes with $n$ vertices, for each value of $k$, and characterising the minimisers, has recently been solved for $n\le2d$. We establish the corresponding…

The degree set of a finite simple graph $G$ is the set of distinct degrees of vertices of $G$. A theorem of Kapoor, Polimeni & Wall asserts that the least order of a graph with a given degree set $\mathscr D$ is $1+\max \mathscr D$.…

We consider the situation where one is given a set S of points in the plane and a collection D of unit disks embedded in the plane. We show that finding a minimum cardinality subset of D such that any path between any two points in S is…

In 1962, V.A. Belonogov proved that if a finite group $G$ contains two maximal subgroups of coprime orders, then either $G$ is one of known solvable groups or $G$ is simple. In this short note based on results by M. Liebeck and J. Saxl on…

Let $\mathcal D=(\Omega, \mathcal B)$ be a pair of $v$ point set $\Omega$ and a set $\mathcal B$ consists of $k$ point subsets of $\Omega$ which are called blocks. Let $d$ be the maximal cardinality of the intersections between the distinct…

It is a classical result of Harper that the limiting distribution of the number of blocks in partitions of the set $\{1, 2,..., n\}$ is normal. In this paper, using the saddle point method we prove the normality of the limiting distribution…

We give a sharp bound on the number of triangles in a graph with fixed number of edges. We also characterize graphs that achieve the maximum number of triangles. Using the upper bound on number of triangles, we prove that if $G$ is a…

Let $G$ be a finite group. In order to determine the smallest cardinality $d(G)$ of a generating set of $G$ and a generating set with this cardinality, one should repeat many times the test whether a subset of $G$ of small cardinality…

For a graph $G$ in which vertices are either black or white, a zero forcing process is an iterative vertex color changing process such that the only white neighbor of a black vertex becomes black in the next time step. A zero forcing set is…

Let $G$ be a graph and $a,b$ vertices of $G$. A minimal $a,b$-separator of $G$ is an inclusion-wise minimal vertex set of $G$ that separates $a$ and $b$. We consider the problem of enumerating the minimal $a,b$-separators of $G$ that…

In this note we will provide proofs for the various statements that have been made in the literature about blocking sets of index three. Our aim is to clarify what is known about the characterization of these sets. Specifically, we provide…

We study two decomposition problems in combinatorial geometry. The first part deals with the decomposition of multiple coverings of the plane. We say that a planar set is cover-decomposable if there is a constant m such that any m-fold…

Let $B$ be a $p$-block of a finite group, and set $m=$ $\sum \chi(1)^2$, the sum taken over all height zero characters of $B$. Motivated by a result of M. Isaacs characterising $p$-nilpotent finite groups in terms of character degrees, we…

We exhibit a new application of two dimensional covering systems, examples of integer pairs $a,b$ for which $a^m-b^n$ has a prime divisor from some given finite set of primes, for every pair of integers $m,n\geq 0$. This leads us to…

Counting dominating sets in a graph $G$ is closely related to the neighborhood complex of $G$. We exploit this relation to prove that the number of dominating sets $d(G)$ of a graph is determined by the number of complete bipartite…