English

$K_4$-intersecting families of graphs

Combinatorics 2021-04-02 v2

Abstract

Ellis, Filmus, and Friedgut proved an old conjecture of Simonovits and S\'os showing that the maximum size of a triangle-intersecting family of graphs on nn vertices has size at most 2(n2)32^{\binom{n}{2} - 3}, with equality for the family of graphs containing some fixed triangle. They conjectured that their results extend to cross-intersecting families, as well to KtK_t-intersecting families. We prove these conjectures for t{3,4}t \in \{3,4\}, showing that if F1\mathcal F_1 and F2\mathcal F_2 are families of graphs on nn labeled vertices such that for any G1F1G_1 \in \mathcal F_1 and G2F2G_2 \in \mathcal F_2, G1G2G_1 \cap G_2 contains a KtK_t, then F1F24(n2)(t2)\lvert \mathcal F_1 \rvert \lvert \mathcal F_2 \rvert \le 4^{\binom{n}{2} - \binom{t}{2}}, with equality if and only if F1=F2\mathcal F_1 = \mathcal F_2 consists of all graphs that contain some fixed KtK_t. We also establish a stability result. More generally, "G1G2G_1 \cap G_2 contains a KtK_t" can be replaced by "G1G_1 and G2G_2 agree on a non-(t1)(t-1)-colorable graph."

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2103.12671,
  title  = {$K_4$-intersecting families of graphs},
  author = {Aaron Berger and Yufei Zhao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.12671},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

16 pages, 3 tables

R2 v1 2026-06-24T00:28:52.640Z