English
Related papers

Related papers: On set systems without singleton intersections

200 papers

Let $\mathcal{A}$ be a union-closed family of sets with universe $\bigcup_{A \in \mathcal{A}}A = [n] = \{1,\cdots,n\}$ and length $\ell$. We prove that $|\mathcal{A}| \leq \sum_{i=0}^{\ell} \binom{n}{i}$, with equality if and only if…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-11-14 Christopher Bouchard

Families $\mathcal{A}_1, \mathcal{A}_2, ..., \mathcal{A}_k$ of sets are said to be \emph{cross-intersecting} if for any $i$ and $j$ in $\{1, 2, ..., k\}$ with $i \neq j$, any set in $\mathcal{A}_i$ intersects any set in $\mathcal{A}_j$. For…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2011-03-22 Peter Borg

Union-free families of subsets of $[n]=\{1,... n\}$ have been studied in \cite{FF}. In this paper, we provide a complete characterization of maximal {\it symmetric difference}-free families of subsets of $[n]$.

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2010-10-14 Travis G. Buck , Anant P. Godbole

Two subsets $A$ and $B$ of a ground set $X$ are \emph{crossing} if none of the four sets $A\setminus B,B\setminus A,A\cap B, X\setminus (A\cup B)$ are empty. Almost fifty years ago, Karzanov and Lomonosov conjectured that every family of…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-03-06 István Tomon

A skew Bollob\'{a}s system $\mathcal{P}=\{(A_i,B_i):1\leq i\leq m\}$ is a collection of pairs of disjoint subsets of $[n]$ such that $A_i\cap B_j\ne\emptyset$ for any $1\leq i<j\leq m$. Denote by $S_1(a, b)$ or $S_2(a, b)$ the maximum size…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-05-01 Yu Fang , Tao Feng , Xiaomiao Wang

A set family ${\cal F}$ is called intersecting if every two members of ${\cal F}$ intersect, and it is called uniform if all members of ${\cal F}$ share a common size. A uniform family ${\cal F} \subseteq \binom{[n]}{k}$ of $k$-subsets of…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2024-07-19 Ishay Haviv , Michal Parnas

We present equivalent formulations for concepts related to set families for which every subfamily with empty intersection has a bounded sub-collection with empty intersection. Hereby, we summarize the progress on the related questions about…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-10-31 Stijn Cambie , Nika Salia

A sunflower is a collection of distinct sets such that the intersection of any two of them is the same as the common intersection $C$ of all of them, and $|C|$ is smaller than each of the sets. A longstanding conjecture due to Erd\H{o}s and…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-01-29 Dhruv Mubayi , Lujia Wang

A pair of families $(\cF,\cG)$ is said to be \emph{cross-Sperner} if there exists no pair of sets $F \in \cF, G \in \cG$ with $F \subseteq G$ or $G \subseteq F$. There are two ways to measure the size of the pair $(\cF,\cG)$: with the sum…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2011-04-21 Dániel Gerbner , Nathan Lemons , Cory Palmer , Balázs Patkós , Vajk Szécsi

In this paper, we derive a tight upper bound for the size of an intersecting $k$-Sperner family of subspaces of the $n$-dimensional vector space $\mathbb{F}_{q}^{n}$ over finite field $\mathbb{F}_{q}$ which gives a $q$-analogue of the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-05-01 Jiuqiang Liu , Guihai Yu , Lihua Feng , Yongtao Li

Two families $\mathcal{F},\mathcal{G}$ of $k$-subsets of $\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$ are called {\it non-trivial cross-intersecting} if $F\cap G\neq \emptyset$ for all $F\in \mathcal{F}, G\in \mathcal{G}$ and $\cap \{F\colon F\in…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-05-12 Peter Frankl , Jian Wang

The well-known Sauer lemma states that a family $\mathcal{F}\subseteq 2^{[n]}$ of VC-dimension at most $d$ has size at most $\sum_{i=0}^d\binom{n}{i}$. We obtain both random and explicit constructions to prove that the corresponding…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-03-17 Nóra Frankl , Sergei Kiselev , Andrey Kupavskii , Balázs Patkós

The Erdos-Ko-Rado theorem tells us how large an intersecting family of r-sets from an n-set can be, while results due to Lovasz and Tuza give bounds on the number of singletons that can occur as pairwise intersections of sets from such a…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2007-05-23 John Talbot

For a $k$-graph $\mathcal{F}\subset \binom{[n]}{k}$, the clique number of $\mathcal{F}$ is defined to be the maximum size of a subset $Q$ of $[n]$ with $\binom{Q}{k}\subset \mathcal{F}$. In the present paper, we determine the maximum number…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-01-01 Peter Frankl , Erica L. L. Liu , Jian Wang

A $k$-partition of an $n$-set $X$ is a collection of $k$ pairwise disjoint non-empty subsets whose union is $X$. A family of $k$-partitions of $X$ is called $t$-intersecting if any two of its members share at least $t$ blocks. A…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-10-27 Jie Wen , Benjian Lv

Consider families of $k$-subsets (or blocks) on a ground set of size $v$. Recall that if all $t$-subsets occur with the same frequency $\lambda$, one obtains a $t$-design with index $\lambda$. On the other hand, if all $t$-subsets occur…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2013-11-08 Peter J. Dukes , Jane Wodlinger

We let $\mathcal{F}$ be a finite family of sets closed under taking unions and $\emptyset \not \in \mathcal{F}$, and call an element abundant if it belongs to more than half of the sets of $\mathcal{F}$. In this notation, the classical…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-05-31 Adam Kabela , Michal Polák , Jakub Teska

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

A subset $A$ of a finite abelian group $G$ is called $(k,l)$-sum-free if the sum of $k$ (not-necessarily-distinct) elements of $A$ never equals the sum of $l$ (not-necessarily-distinct) elements of $A$. We find an explicit formula for the…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2018-09-07 Béla Bajnok , Ryan Matzke

In this paper, we describe the structure of maximal non-trivial uniform $t$-intersecting families with large size for finite sets. In the special case when $t=1$, our result gives rise to Kostochka and Mubayi's result in 2017.

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2020-11-17 Mengyu Cao , Benjian Lv , Kaishun Wang