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An old problem of Moser asks: how large of a union-free subfamily does every family of m sets have? A family of sets is called union-free if there are no three distinct sets in the family such that the union of two of the sets is equal to…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2011-03-17 Jacob Fox , Choongbum Lee , Benny Sudakov

We demonstrate the truth of the sunflower conjecture by showing that a family $\mathcal{F}$ of sets each of cardinality at most $m$ includes a $k$-sunflower, if $|\mathcal{F}| > ( c k )^{2m}$ for a constant $c>0$ independent of $m$ and $k$,…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-04-29 Junichiro Fukuyama

We present some problems and results about variants of sunflowers in families of sets. In particular, we improve an upper bound of the first author, K\"orner and Monti on the maximum number of binary vectors of length $n$ so that every four…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2020-10-14 Noga Alon , Ron Holzman

A collection of distinct sets is called a sunflower if the intersection of any pair of sets equals the common intersection of all the sets. Sunflowers are fundamental objects in extremal set theory with relations and applications to many…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-10-25 Domagoj Bradač , Matija Bucić , Benny Sudakov

This paper explores the structure of the combinatorial domain $2^X$ in relation to sunflowers. The previous study found some intrinsic properties of the $l$-extension \[ Ext \left( \mathcal{F}, l \right) = \left\{ V ~:~ V \in {X \choose…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-04-30 Junichiro Fukuyama

A sunflower with $r$ petals is a collection of $r$ sets so that the intersection of each pair is equal to the intersection of all of them. Erd\H{o}s and Rado proved the sunflower lemma: for any fixed $r$, any family of sets of size $w$,…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-09-01 Ryan Alweiss , Shachar Lovett , Kewen Wu , Jiapeng Zhang

Using the sunflower method, we show that if $\theta \in (0,1) \cap \mathbb{Q}$ and $\mathcal{F}$ is a $O(n^{1/3})$-bounded $\theta$-intersecting family over $[n]$, then $\lvert \mathcal{F} \rvert = O(n)$, and that if $\mathcal{F}$ is…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-09-17 Niranjan Balachandran , Shagnik Das , Brahadeesh Sankarnarayanan

In 1977, Duke and Erd\H{o}s asked the following general question: What is the largest size of a family $\mathtt{F} \subset \binom{[n]}{k}$ that does not contain a sunflower with $s$ petals and core of size exactly $t - 1$? This problem is…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-11-24 Andrey Kupavskii , Fedor Noskov

For a family $\mathcal{H} \subseteq \binom{[n]}{k}$, a subset $\{A_1, A_2, \ldots, A_m\} \subseteq \mathcal{H}$ is called a \textit{matching} of size~$m$ if the sets $A_1, A_2, \ldots, A_m$ are pairwise disjoint. The \textit{matching…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-04-24 Haixiang Zhang , Mengyu Cao , Mei Lu

We introduce \emph{moonflowers}, a weaker analogue of sunflowers. A family of sets $S_1,\ldots,S_k$ is a $k$-moonflower if each set $S_i$ contains at least one element that is absent from all the others. We study the extremal problem of…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-05-12 Shachar Lovett , Raghu Meka , Yimeng Wang

A function $f: \mathbb{F}_2^n \rightarrow \{0,1\}$ is triangle-free if there are no $x_1,x_2,x_3 \in \mathbb{F}_2^n$ satisfying $x_1+x_2+x_3=0$ and $f(x_1)=f(x_2)=f(x_3)=1$. In testing triangle-freeness, the goal is to distinguish with high…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2014-11-19 Ishay Haviv , Ning Xie

A sunflower is a collection of sets $\{U_1,\ldots, U_n\}$ such that the pairwise intersection $U_i\cap U_j$ is the same for all choices of distinct $i$ and $j$. We study sunflowers of convex open sets in $\mathbb R^d$, and provide a…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-07-19 R. Amzi Jeffs

A coloured version of classic extremal problems dates back to Erd\H{o}s and Rothschild, who in 1974 asked which $n$-vertex graph has the maximum number of 2-edge-colourings without monochromatic triangles. They conjectured that the answer…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-06-11 Shagnik Das , Roman Glebov , Benny Sudakov , Tuan Tran

A tri-colored sum-free set in an abelian group $H$ is a collection of ordered triples in $H^3$, $\{(a_i,b_i,c_i)\}_{i=1}^m$, such that the equation $a_i+b_j+c_k=0$ holds if and only if $i=j=k$. Using a variant of the lemma introduced by…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2016-05-27 Robert Kleinberg

A sunflower with p petals consists of p sets whose pairwise intersections are identical. The goal of the sunflower problem is to find the smallest r=r(p,k) such that any family of r^k distinct k-element sets contains a sunflower with p…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-04-06 Tolson Bell , Suchakree Chueluecha , Lutz Warnke

Let $\mathscr{H}$ be a family of digraphs. A digraph $D$ is \emph{$\mathscr{H}$-free} if it contains no isomorphic copy of any member of $\mathscr{H}$. For $k\geq2$, we set $C_{\leq k}=\{C_{2}, C_{3},\ldots,C_{k}\}$, where $C_{\ell}$ is a…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-11-08 Bin Chen , Xinmin Hou

An $r$-sunflower is a collection of $r$ sets such that the intersection of any two sets in the collection is identical. We analyze a random process which constructs a $w$-uniform $r$-sunflower free family starting with an empty family and…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-09-23 Patrick Bennett , Amanda Priestley

A set system $\mathcal{F}$ is $t$-\textit{intersecting}, if the size of the intersection of every pair of its elements has size at least $t$. A set system $\mathcal{F}$ is $k$-\textit{Sperner}, if it does not contain a chain of length…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-09-07 József Balogh , William B. Linz , Balázs Patkós

We prove that the maximum size of a family of $k$-element subsets of the set $[n] = \{1, 2, \ldots, n\}$ which contains no singleton intersection is $\binom{n-2}{k-2}$ when $3k-3 \le n \le k^2-k+1$. This improves upon a recent result of…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-04-02 William Linz

A family of subsets of a $t$-set is a \emph{$d$-cover-free family} or $d$-CFF if no subset in the family is contained in the union of any $d$ other subsets. Let $t(d, n)$ denote the minimum $t$ for which there exists a $d$-CFF on a $t$-set…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-05-14 Prangya Parida , Lucia Moura