Related papers: Constructing sparse Davenport-Schinzel sequences

Let $[n]=\{1, \ldots, n\}$. A sequence $u=a_1a_2\dots a_l$ over $[n]$ is called $k$-sparse if $a_i = a_j$, $i > j$ implies $i-j\geq k$. In other words, every consecutive subsequence of $u$ of length at most $k$ does not have letters in…

Sequence pattern avoidance is a central topic in combinatorics. A sequence $s$ contains a sequence $u$ if some subsequence of $s$ can be changed into $u$ by a one-to-one renaming of its letters. If $s$ does not contain $u$, then $s$ avoids…

An $(r, s)$-formation is a concatenation of $s$ permutations of $r$ letters. If $u$ is a sequence with $r$ distinct letters, then let $\mathit{Ex}(u, n)$ be the maximum length of any $r$-sparse sequence with $n$ distinct letters which has…

A generalized Davenport-Schinzel sequence is one over a finite alphabet that contains no subsequences isomorphic to a fixed forbidden subsequence. One of the fundamental problems in this area is bounding (asymptotically) the maximum length…

Generalized Davenport-Schinzel sequences are sequences that avoid a forbidden subsequence and have a sparsity requirement on their letters. Upper bounds on the lengths of generalized Davenport-Schinzel sequences have been applied to a…

An order-$s$ Davenport-Schinzel sequence over an $n$-letter alphabet is one avoiding immediate repetitions and alternating subsequences with length $s+2$. The main problem is to determine the maximum length of such a sequence, as a function…

Let $up(r, t) = (a_1 a_2 \dots a_r)^t$. We investigate the problem of determining the maximum possible integer $n(r, t)$ for which there exist $2t-1$ permutations $\pi_1, \pi_2, \dots, \pi_{2t-1}$ of $1, 2, \dots, n(r, t)$ such that the…

One of the longest-standing open problems in computational geometry is to bound the lower envelope of $n$ univariate functions, each pair of which crosses at most $s$ times, for some fixed $s$. This problem is known to be equivalent to…

Let lambda_s(n) denote the maximum length of a Davenport-Schinzel sequence of order s on n symbols. For s=3 it is known that lambda_3(n) = Theta(n alpha(n)) (Hart and Sharir, 1986). For general s>=4 there are almost-tight upper and lower…

We present new, and mostly sharp, bounds on the maximum length of certain generalizations of Davenport-Schinzel sequences. Among the results are sharp bounds on order-$s$ {\em double DS} sequences, for all $s$, sharp bounds on sequences…

In this paper, we introduce saturation and semisaturation functions of sequences, and we prove a number of fundamental results about these functions. Given a forbidden sequence $u$ with $r$ distinct letters, we say that a sequence $s$ on a…

Pattern avoidance is a central topic in graph theory and combinatorics. Pattern avoidance in matrices has applications in computer science and engineering, such as robot motion planning and VLSI circuit design. A $d$-dimensional zero-one…

We introduce a containment relation of hypergraphs which respects linear orderings of vertices and investigate associated extremal functions. We extend, by means of a more generally applicable theorem, the n.log n upper bound on the ordered…

Keszegh (2009) proved that the extremal function $ex(n, P)$ of any forbidden light $2$-dimensional 0-1 matrix $P$ is at most quasilinear in $n$, using a reduction to generalized Davenport-Schinzel sequences. We extend this result to…

Let $A_{s,k}(m)$ be the maximum number of distinct letters in any sequence which can be partitioned into $m$ contiguous blocks of pairwise distinct letters, has at least $k$ occurrences of every letter, and has no subsequence forming an…

In this paper, we define a notion of containment and avoidance for subsets of $\mathbb{R}^2$. Then we introduce a new, continuous and super-additive extremal function for subsets $P \subseteq \mathbb{R}^2$ called $px(n, P)$, which is the…

An $(n,s,q)$-graph is an $n$-vertex multigraph where every set of $s$ vertices spans at most $q$ edges. In this paper, we determine the maximum product of the edge multiplicities in $(n,s,q)$-graphs if the congruence class of $q$ modulo…

In this paper, we study the saturation function $\mathrm{Sat}(n,u)$ for sequences. Saturation for sequences was introduced by Anand, Geneson, Kaustav, and Tsai (2021), who proved that $\mathrm{Sat}(n,u)=O(n)$ for two-letter sequences $u$…

The extremal theory of forbidden 0-1 matrices studies the asymptotic growth of the function $\mathrm{Ex}(P,n)$, which is the maximum weight of a matrix $A\in\{0,1\}^{n\times n}$ whose submatrices avoid a fixed pattern $P\in\{0,1\}^{k\times…

Let $(s_2(n))_{n=0}^\infty$ denote Stern's diatomic sequence. For $n\geq 2$, we may view $s_2(n)$ as the number of partitions of $n-1$ into powers of $2$ with each part occurring at most twice. More generally, for integers $b,n\geq 2$, let…