English

A constant lower bound for the union-closed sets conjecture

Combinatorics 2022-11-29 v2

Abstract

We show that for any union-closed family F2[n],F{}\mathcal{F} \subseteq 2^{[n]}, \mathcal{F} \neq \{\emptyset\}, there exists an i[n]i \in [n] which is contained in a 0.010.01 fraction of the sets in F\mathcal{F}. This is the first known constant lower bound, and improves upon the Ω(log2(F)1)\Omega(\log_2(|\mathcal{F}|)^{-1}) bounds of Knill and W\'{o}jick. Our result follows from an information theoretic strengthening of the conjecture. Specifically, we show that if A,BA, B are independent samples from a distribution over subsets of [n][n] such that Pr[iA]<0.01Pr[i \in A] < 0.01 for all ii and H(A)>0H(A) > 0, then H(AB)>H(A)H(A \cup B) > H(A).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2211.09055,
  title  = {A constant lower bound for the union-closed sets conjecture},
  author = {Justin Gilmer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.09055},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

9 pages, 1 figure. (Update 11/28/22: Typos fixed, and added reference to follow up work improving the bound and refuting Conjecture 1.)

R2 v1 2026-06-28T06:03:32.641Z