Erdős, Gyárfás and Pyber showed that every r-edge-coloured complete graph Kn can be covered by 25 r2 log r vertex-disjoint monochromatic cycles (independent of n). Here we extend their result to the setting of binomial random graphs. That is, we show that if $p = p(n) = \Omega(n^{-1/(2r)})$ , then with high probability any r-edge-coloured G(n, p) can be covered by at most 1000r4 log r vertex-disjoint monochromatic cycles. This answers a question of Korándi, Mousset, Nenadov, Škorić and Sudakov.

For a real constant α, let $\pi _3^\alpha (G)$ be the minimum of twice the number of K2’s plus α times the number of K3’s over all edge decompositions of G into copies of K2 and K3, where Kr denotes the complete graph on r vertices. Let $\pi _3^\alpha (n)$ be the maximum of $\pi _3^\alpha (G)$ over all graphs G with n vertices.

The extremal function $\pi _3^3(n)$ was first studied by Győri and Tuza (Studia Sci. Math. Hungar.22 (1987) 315–320). In recent progress on this problem, Král’, Lidický, Martins and Pehova (Combin. Probab. Comput.28 (2019) 465–472) proved via flag algebras that$\pi _3^3(n) \le (1/2 + o(1)){n^2}$. We extend their result by determining the exact value of $\pi _3^\alpha (n)$ and the set of extremal graphs for all α and sufficiently large n. In particular, we show for α = 3 that Kn and the complete bipartite graph ${K_{\lfloor n/2 \rfloor,\lceil n/2 \rceil }}$ are the only possible extremal examples for large n.

Let G be a graph of minimum degree at least k and let Gp be the random subgraph of G obtained by keeping each edge independently with probability p. We are interested in the size of the largest complete minor that Gp contains when p = (1 + ε)/k with ε > 0. We show that with high probability Gp contains a complete minor of order $\tilde{\Omega}(\sqrt{k})$ , where the ~ hides a polylogarithmic factor. Furthermore, in the case where the order of G is also bounded above by a constant multiple of k, we show that this polylogarithmic term can be removed, giving a tight bound.

The Turán number ex(n, H) of a graph H is the maximal number of edges in an H-free graph on n vertices. In 1983, Chung and Erdős asked which graphs H with e edges minimise ex(n, H). They resolved this question asymptotically for most of the range of e and asked to complete the picture. In this paper, we answer their question by resolving all remaining cases. Our result translates directly to the setting of universality, a well-studied notion of finding graphs which contain every graph belonging to a certain family. In this setting, we extend previous work done by Babai, Chung, Erdős, Graham and Spencer, and by Alon and Asodi.

Bollobás and Riordan, in their paper ‘Metrics for sparse graphs’, proposed a number of provocative conjectures extending central results of quasirandom graphs and graph limits to sparse graphs. We refute these conjectures by exhibiting a sequence of graphs with convergent normalized subgraph densities (and pseudorandom C4-counts), but with no limit expressible as a kernel.

We prove two estimates for the expectation of the exponential of a complex function of a random permutation or subset. Using this theory, we find asymptotic expressions for the expected number of copies and induced copies of a given graph in a uniformly random graph with degree sequence(d1, …, dn) as n→ ∞. We also determine the expected number of spanning trees in this model. The range of degrees covered includes dj= λn + O(n1/2+ε) for some λ bounded away from 0 and 1.

A k-uniform tight cycle $C_s^k$ is a hypergraph on s > k vertices with a cyclic ordering such that every k consecutive vertices under this ordering form an edge. The pair (k, s) is admissible if gcd (k, s) = 1 or k / gcd (k,s) is even. We prove that if $s \ge 2{k^2}$ and H is a k-uniform hypergraph with minimum codegree at least (1/2 + o(1))|V(H)|, then every vertex is covered by a copy of $C_s^k$. The bound is asymptotically sharp if (k, s) is admissible. Our main tool allows us to arbitrarily rearrange the order in which a tight path wraps around a complete k-partite k-uniform hypergraph, which may be of independent interest.

For hypergraphs F and H, a perfect F-tiling in H is a spanning collection of vertex-disjoint copies of F. For $k \ge 3$, there are currently only a handful of known F-tiling results when F is k-uniform but not k-partite. If s ≢ 0 mod k, then $C_s^k$ is not k-partite. Here we prove an F-tiling result for a family of non-k-partite k-uniform hypergraphs F. Namely, for $s \ge 5{k^2}$, every k-uniform hypergraph H with minimum codegree at least (1/2 + 1/(2s) + o(1))|V(H)| has a perfect $C_s^k$-tiling. Moreover, the bound is asymptotically sharp if k is even and (k, s) is admissible.

We prove that any n-vertex graph whose complement is triangle-free contains n2/12 – o(n2) edge-disjoint triangles. This is tight for the disjoint union of two cliques of order n/2. We also prove a corresponding stability theorem, that all large graphs attaining the above bound are close to being bipartite. Our results answer a question of Alon and Linial, and make progress on a conjecture of Erdős.

The notion of the capacity of a polynomial was introduced by Gurvits around 2005, originally to give drastically simplified proofs of the van der Waerden lower bound for permanents of doubly stochastic matrices and Schrijver’s inequality for perfect matchings of regular bipartite graphs. Since this seminal work, the notion of capacity has been utilised to bound various combinatorial quantities and to give polynomial-time algorithms to approximate such quantities (e.g. the number of bases of a matroid). These types of results are often proven by giving bounds on how much a particular differential operator can change the capacity of a given polynomial. In this paper, we unify the theory surrounding such capacity-preserving operators by giving tight capacity preservation bounds for all nondegenerate real stability preservers. We then use this theory to give a new proof of a recent result of Csikvári, which settled Friedland’s lower matching conjecture.

Let ${\mathbb{P}}(ord\pi = ord\pi ')$ be the probability that two independent, uniformly random permutations of [n] have the same order. Answering a question of Thibault Godin, we prove that ${\mathbb{P}}(ord\pi = ord\pi ') = {n^{ - 2 + o(1)}}$ and that ${\mathbb{P}}(ord\pi = ord\pi ') \ge {1 \over 2}{n^{ - 2}}lg*n$ for infinitely many n. (Here lg*n is the height of the tallest tower of twos that is less than or equal to n.)

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.

In this short note, we prove the following analog of the Kővári–Sós–Turán theorem for intersection graphs of boxes. If G is the intersection graph of n axis-parallel boxes in $${{\mathbb{R}}^d}$$ such that G contains no copy of Kt,t, then G has at most ctn( log n)2d+3 edges, where c = c(d)>0 only depends on d. Our proof is based on exploring connections between boxicity, separation dimension and poset dimension. Using this approach, we also show that a construction of Basit, Chernikov, Starchenko, Tao and Tran of K2,2-free incidence graphs of points and rectangles in the plane can be used to disprove a conjecture of Alon, Basavaraju, Chandran, Mathew and Rajendraprasad. We show that there exist graphs of separation dimension 4 having superlinear number of edges.