English

Structured sunflowers and canonical Ramsey properties

Combinatorics 2026-03-10 v2 Logic

Abstract

A first-order structure MM is said to have the infinite sunflower property if, for each kN+k \in \mathbb{N}_+ and each structure MMM' \cong M whose elements are kk-sets, there is SMS \subseteq M', SMS \cong M, such that SS is a sunflower: a collection of sets such that each pair of elements has the same intersection. A class K\mathcal{K} of finite structures is said to have the finite sunflower property if for all kN+k \in \mathbb{N}_+ and BKB \in \mathcal{K}, there is CKC \in \mathcal{K} such that any structure CCC' \cong C whose elements consist of kk-sets contains a copy of BB which is a sunflower. These two notions were introduced by Ackerman, Karker and Mirabi in a recent paper, and give a structural generalisation of the well-known Erd\H{o}s-Rado sunflower lemma for sets. We show two results for countable ultrahomogeneous relational structures with strong amalgamation: first, the infinite sunflower property is equivalent to the canonical infinite point-Ramsey property; second, a certain strengthening of the canonical finite point-Ramsey property implies the finite sunflower property. (Here, "canonical" refers to statements analogous to the Erd\H{o}s-Rado canonical Ramsey theorem, involving colourings with infinitely many colours.) We also show that all free amalgamation classes with a single vertex isomorphism-type have the finite sunflower property, as do many classes of finite metric spaces, and we give a variety of further examples and observations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.04610,
  title  = {Structured sunflowers and canonical Ramsey properties},
  author = {Rob Sullivan and Jeroen Winkel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.04610},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T09:36:00.451Z