We expand the critical point for site percolation on the d-dimensional hypercubic lattice in terms of inverse powers of 2d, and we obtain the first three terms rigorously. This is achieved using the lace expansion.

We prove that for all $\alpha,c>0$ and for all bipartite graphs $H$, all but at most $\alpha n$ vertices of every $cn$-regular graph $G$ whose order $n$ is sufficiently large can be covered by vertex-disjoint copies of $H$. If the vertex classes of $H$ have different size, then even all but a constant number of vertices of $G$ can be covered. This implies that for all $c>0$ and all $r\geq 4$ there exists a constant $C$ such that, in every $cn$-regular graph $G$, all but at most $C$ vertices can be covered by vertex-disjoint subdivisions of $K_r$. We also show that for $r=4,5$ one can take $C=0$.

A tight Hamilton cycle in a k-uniform hypergraph (k-graph) G is a cyclic ordering of the vertices of G such that every set of k consecutive vertices in the ordering forms an edge. Rödl, Ruciński and Szemerédi proved that for $k\ge 3$ , every k-graph on n vertices with minimum codegree at least $n/2+o(n)$ contains a tight Hamilton cycle. We show that the number of tight Hamilton cycles in such k-graphs is ${\exp(n\ln n-\Theta(n))}$ . As a corollary, we obtain a similar estimate on the number of Hamilton ${\ell}$ -cycles in such k-graphs for all ${\ell\in\{0,\ldots,k-1\}}$ , which makes progress on a question of Ferber, Krivelevich and Sudakov.

Let c(G) be the smallest number of edges we have to test in order to determine an unknown acyclic orientation of the given graph G in the worst case. For example, if G is the complete graph on n vertices, then c(G) is the smallest number of comparisons needed to sort n numbers.

We prove that c(G) ≤ (1/4 + o(1))n2 for any graph G on n vertices, answering in the affirmative a question of Aigner, Triesch and Tuza [Discrete Mathematics144 (1995) 3–10]. Also, we show that, for every ϵ > 0, it is NP-hard to approximate the parameter c(G) within a multiplicative factor 74/73 − ϵ.

We present an elementary proof that if $A$ is a finite set of numbers, and the sumset $A+_GA$ is small, $|A+_GA|\leq c|A|$, along a dense graph $G$, then $A$ contains $k$-term arithmetic progressions.

This paper is devoted to an online variant of the minimum spanning tree problem in randomly weighted graphs. We assume that the input graph is complete and the edge weights are uniformly distributed over [0,1]. An algorithm receives the edges one by one and has to decide immediately whether to include the current edge into the spanning tree or to reject it. The corresponding edge sequence is determined by some adversary. We propose an algorithm which achieves $\mathbb{E}[ALG]/\mathbb{E}[OPT]=O(1)$ and $\mathbb{E}[ALG/OPT]=O(1)$ against a fair adaptive adversary, i.e., an adversary which determines the edge order online and is fair in a sense that he does not know more about the edge weights than the algorithm. Furthermore, we prove that no online algorithm performs better than $\mathbb{E}[ALG]/\mathbb{E}[OPT]=\Omega(\log n)$ if the adversary knows the edge weights in advance. This lower bound is tight, since there is an algorithm which yields $\mathbb{E}[ALG]/\mathbb{E}[OPT]=O(\log n)$ against the strongest-imaginable adversary.

We consider connectivity properties and asymptotic slopes for certain random directed graphs on ℤ2 in which the set of points $\mathcal{C}_o$ that the origin connects to is always infinite. We obtain conditions under which the complement of $\mathcal{C}_o$ has no infinite connected component. Applying these results to one of the most interesting such models leads to an improved lower bound for the critical occupation probability for oriented site percolation on the triangular lattice in two dimensions.

The number of closed tree-like walks in a graph is closely related to the moments of the roots of the matching polynomial for the graph. Thus, by counting these walks up to a given length it is possible to find approximations for the matching polynomial. This approach has been used in two separate problems involving asymptotic enumerations of 1-factorizations of regular graphs. Nevertheless, a systematic way to count the required walks had not previously been found.

In this paper we give an algorithm to count closed tree-like walks in a regular graph up to a given length. For small m, this provides expressions for the number of m-matchings in the graph in terms of the numbers of copies of certain small subgraphs that appear in the graph. The simplest of these expressions were already known, having been rediscovered by numerous authors using ad hoc methods. We offer the first general method for producing the expressions. We also find generating functions that isolate the contribution from the simplest kind of subgraph – namely a single cycle of arbitrary length.

For T ∈ GLn (Fq), let Ωn (t, T) be the number of irreducible factors of degree less than or equal to nt in the characteristic polynomial of T. Let

and suppose T is chosen from G Ln(Fq) at random uniformly. We prove that the stochastic process ≺Zn(t)≻t∈[0, 1] converges to the standard Brownian motion process W(t), as n → ∞.

In this paper, we study certain pairings which are defined as follows: if A and B are finite subsets of an arbitrary group, a Wakeford–Fan–Losonczy pairing from B onto A is a bijection φ : B → A such that bφ(b) ∉ A, for every b ∈ B. The number of such pairings is denoted by μ(B, A).

We investigate the quantity μ(B, A) for A and B, two finite subsets of an arbitrary group satisfying 1 ∉ B, |A| = |B|, and the fact that the order of every element of B is ≥ |B| + 1. Extending earlier results, we show that in this case, μ(B, A) is never equal to 0. Furthermore we prove an explicit lower bound on μ(B, A) in terms of |B| and the cardinality of the group generated by B, which is valid unless A and B have a special form explicitly described. In the case A = B, our bound holds unless B is a translate of a progression.

Let G be a minimally n-edge-connected finite simple graph with vertex number |G| ≥ 2n + 2 + [3/n] and let n ≥ 3 be odd. It is proved that the number of vertices of degree n in G is at least ((n − 1 − ∈n)/(2n + 1))|G| + 2 + 2∈n, where ∈n = (3n + 3)/(2n2 − 3n − 3), and that for every n ≡ 3 (mod 4) this lower bound is attained by infinitely many minimally n-edge-connected finite simple graphs.

Let G be a simple 3-connected graph with at least five vertices. Tutte [13] showed that G has at least one contractible edge. Thomassen [11] gave a simple proof of this fact and showed that contractible edges have many applications. In this paper, we show that there are at most $\frac{|V(G)|}{5}$ vertices that are not incident to contractible edges in a 3-connected graph G. This bound is best-possible. We also show that if a vertex v is not incident to any contractible edge in G, then v has at least four neighbours having degree three, and each such neighbour is incident to exactly two contractible edges. We give short proofs of several results on contractible edges in 3-connected graphs as well. We also study the contractible elements for k-connected matroids. We partially solve an open problem for regular matroids.

For any fixed l < k we present families of asymptotically good packings and coverings of the l-subsets of an n-element set by k-subsets, and an algorithm that, given a natural number i, finds the ith k-subset of the family in time and space polynomial in log n.

We investigate a graph function which is related to the local density, the maximal cut and the least eigenvalue of a graph. In particular it enables us to prove the following assertions.

Let p [ges ] 3 be an integer, c ∈ (0, 1/2) and G be a Kp-free graph on n vertices with e [les ] cn2 edges. There exists a positive constant α = α (c, p) such that:

(a) some [lfloor ]n/2[rfloor ]-subset of V (G) induces at most (c-4 − α) n2 edges (this answers a question of Paul Erdős);

(b) G can be made bipartite by the omission of at most (c-2 − α) n2 edges.

Given a set of s points and a set of n2 lines in three-dimensional Euclidean space such that each line is incident to n points but no n lines are coplanar, we show that s = Ω(n11/4). This is the first non-trivial answer to a question recently posed by Jean Bourgain.

We develop a method to compute the generating function of the number of vertices inside certain regions of the Uniform Infinite Planar Triangulation (UIPT). The computations are mostly combinatorial in flavour and the main tool is the decomposition of the UIPT into layers, called the skeleton decomposition, introduced by Krikun [20]. In particular, we get explicit formulas for the generating functions of the number of vertices inside hulls (or completed metric balls) centred around the root, and the number of vertices inside geodesic slices of these hulls. We also recover known results about the scaling limit of the volume of hulls previously obtained by Curien and Le Gall by studying the peeling process of the UIPT in [17].

We propose a counting dimension for subsets of $\mathbb{Z}$ and prove that, under certain conditions on E,F ⊂ $\mathbb{Z}$, for Lebesgue almost every λ ∈ $\mathbb{R}$ the counting dimension of E + ⌊λF⌋ is at least the minimum between 1 and the sum of the counting dimensions of E and F. Furthermore, if the sum of the counting dimensions of E and F is larger than 1, then E + ⌊λF⌋ has positive upper Banach density for Lebesgue almost every λ ∈ $\mathbb{R}$. The result has direct consequences when E,F are arithmetic sets, e.g., the integer values of a polynomial with integer coefficients.

Given partially ordered sets (posets) $(P, \leq _P\!)$ and $(P^{\prime}, \leq _{P^{\prime}}\!)$ , we say that $P^{\prime}$ contains a copy of $P$ if for some injective function $f\,:\, P\rightarrow P^{\prime}$ and for any $X, Y\in P$ , $X\leq _P Y$ if and only if $f(X)\leq _{P^{\prime}} f(Y)$ . For any posets $P$ and $Q$ , the poset Ramsey number $R(P,Q)$ is the least positive integer $N$ such that no matter how the elements of an $N$ -dimensional Boolean lattice are coloured in blue and red, there is either a copy of $P$ with all blue elements or a copy of $Q$ with all red elements. We focus on a poset Ramsey number $R(P, Q_n)$ for a fixed poset $P$ and an $n$ -dimensional Boolean lattice $Q_n$ , as $n$ grows large. We show a sharp jump in behaviour of this number as a function of $n$ depending on whether or not $P$ contains a copy of either a poset $V$ , that is a poset on elements $A, B, C$ such that $B\gt C$ , $A\gt C$ , and $A$ and $B$ incomparable, or a poset $\Lambda$ , its symmetric counterpart. Specifically, we prove that if $P$ contains a copy of $V$ or $\Lambda$ then $R(P, Q_n) \geq n +\frac{1}{15} \frac{n}{\log n}$ . Otherwise $R(P, Q_n) \leq n + c(P)$ for a constant $c(P)$ . This gives the first non-marginal improvement of a lower bound on poset Ramsey numbers and as a consequence gives $R(Q_2, Q_n) = n + \Theta \left(\frac{n}{\log n}\right)$ .

Whereas the cylindrical version of an Eden cluster in the plane has a surface roughness with a fractal dimension predicted by theory, the central version has hitherto seemed to conflict with theory. However, a fresh way of analysing computer simulations of the central version shows that this anomaly is more apparent than real, and the central version can thereby be reconciled with theory. As a by-product, we obtain statistical data on the properties of the central version in the plane. The macroscopic shape of a central cluster is not circular, and microscopic roughness depends weakly upon the angular direction of portions of the surface. Rather surprisingly, the edge method of construction gives a more nearly circular shape than the external and internal methods. For higher dimensions than the plane, the corresponding treatment is more difficult, and there the situation remains obscure. Higher dimensions and certain other clusters (e.g. Richardson clusters) are treated briefly in Section 6. The theory of surface roughness uses a spatial generalization of martingales, called a serial harness: this is also described in Section 6.

We study semirandom k-colourable graphs made up as follows. Partition the vertex set V = {1, . . ., n} randomly into k classes V1, . . ., Vk of equal size and include each Vi–Vj-edge with probability p independently (1 ≤ i < j ≤ k) to obtain a graph G0. Then, an adversary may add further Vi–Vj-edges (i≠j) to G0, thereby completing the semirandom graph G = G*n,p,k. We show that if np ≥ max{(1 + ϵ)klnn, C0k2} for a certain constant C0>0 and an arbitrarily small but constant ϵ>0, an optimal colouring of G*n,p,k can be found in polynomial time with high probability. Furthermore, if np ≥ C0max{klnn, k2}, a k-colouring of G*n,p,k can be computed in polynomial expected time. Moreover, an optimal colouring of G*n,p,k can be computed in expected polynomial time if k ≤ ln1/3n and np ≥ C0klnn. By contrast, it is NP-hard to k-colour G*n,p,k With high probability if .