Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 January 2011
We consider the problem of finding the maximum possible size of a family of d-dimensional subcubes of the n-cube {0, 1}n, none of which is contained in the union of the others. (We call such a family ‘irredundant’). Aharoni and Holzman [1] conjectured that for d > n/2, the answer is (which is attained by the family of all d-subcubes containing a fixed point). We prove this in the case where all the subcubes go through either (0, 0, . . . , 0) or (1, 1, . . . , 1). We also give a new proof of an upper bound of Meshulam [6]. Finally, we consider the case d ≤ n/2. We give a probabilistic construction showing that in this case, Meshulam's upper bound is correct to within a constant factor. When n = 2d, we construct an irredundant family of size .