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A longstanding conjecture of Seymour states that in every oriented graph there is a vertex whose second outneighbourhood is at least as large as its outneighbourhood. In this short note we show that, for any fixed $p\in[0,1/2)$, a.a.s. every orientation of $G(n,p)$ satisfies Seymour's conjecture (as well as a related conjecture of Sullivan). This improves on a recent result of Botler, Moura and Naia. Moreover, we show that $p=1/2$ is a natural barrier for this problem, in the following sense: for any fixed $p\in(1/2,1)$, Seymour's conjecture is actually equivalent to saying that, with probability bounded away from $0$, every orientation of $G(n,p)$ satisfies Seymour's conjecture. This provides a first reduction of the problem. For a second reduction, we consider minimum degrees and show that, if Seymour's conjecture is false, then there must exist arbitrarily large strongly-connected counterexamples with bounded minimum outdegree. Contrasting this, we show that vertex-minimal counterexamples must have large minimum outdegree., Comment: 9 pages; final version, to appear in Random Structures & Algorithms

A matrix is given in ``shredded'' form if we are presented with the multiset of rows and the multiset of columns, but not told which row is which or which column is which. The matrix is reconstructible if it is uniquely determined by this information. Let $M$ be a random binary $n\times n$ matrix, where each entry independently is $1$ with probability $p=p(n)\le\frac12$. Atamanchuk, Devroye and Vicenzo introduced the problem and showed that $M$ is reconstructible with high probability for $p\ge (2+\varepsilon)\frac{1}{n}\log n$. Here we find that the sharp threshold for reconstructibility is at $p\sim\frac{1}{2n}\log n$., Comment: 17 pages

In $H$-percolation, we start with an Erd\H{o}s--R\'enyi graph ${\mathcal G}_{n,p}$ and then iteratively add edges that complete copies of $H$. The process percolates if all edges missing from ${\mathcal G}_{n,p}$ are eventually added. We find the critical threshold $p_c$ when $H={\mathcal G}_{k,1/2}$ is uniformly random, solving a problem of Balogh, Bollob\'as and Morris.

In the graph shotgun assembly problem, we are given the balls of radius $r$ around each vertex of a graph and asked to reconstruct the graph. We study the shotgun assembly of the Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi random graph $\mathcal G(n,p)$ from a wide range of values of $r$. We determine the threshold for reconstructibility for each $r\geq 3$, extending and improving substantially on results of Mossel and Ross for $r=3$. For $r=2$, we give upper and lower bounds that improve on results of Gaudio and Mossel by polynomial factors. We also give a sharpening of a result of Huang and Tikhomirov for $r=1$., Comment: 36 pages, 3 figures

A common problem in graph colouring seeks to decompose the edge set of a given graph into few similar and simple subgraphs, under certain divisibility conditions. In 1987 Wormald conjectured that the edges of every cubic graph on $4n$ vertices can be partitioned into two isomorphic linear forests. We prove this conjecture for large connected cubic graphs. Our proof uses a wide range of probabilistic tools in conjunction with intricate structural analysis, and introduces a variety of local recolouring techniques., Comment: 49 pages, many figures

Ramsey theory is a central and active branch of combinatorics. Although Ramsey numbers for graphs have been extensively investigated since Ramsey's work in the 1930s, there is still an exponential gap between the best known lower and upper bounds. For $k$-uniform hypergraphs, the bounds are of tower-type, where the height grows with $k$. Here, we give a multidimensional generalisation of Ramsey's Theorem to Cartesian products of graphs, proving that a doubly exponential upper bound suffices in every dimension. More precisely, we prove that for every positive integers $r,n,d$, in any $r$-colouring of the edges of the Cartesian product $\square^{d} K_N$ of $d$ copies of $K_N$, there is a copy of $\square^{d} K_n$ such that the edges in each direction are monochromatic, provided that $N\geq 2^{2^{C_drn^{d}}}$. As an application of our approach we also obtain improvements on the multidimensional Erd\H{o}s-Szekeres Theorem proved by Fishburn and Graham $30$ years ago. Their bound was recently improved by Buci\'c, Sudakov, and Tran, who gave an upper bound that is triply exponential in four or more dimensions. We improve upon their results showing that a doubly expoenential upper bounds holds any number of dimensions.

Consider the hypergraph bootstrap percolation process in which, given a fixed $r$-uniform hypergraph $H$ and starting with a given hypergraph $G_0$, at each step we add to $G_0$ all edges that create a new copy of $H$. We are interested in maximising the number of steps that this process takes before it stabilises. For the case where $H=K_{r+1}^{(r)}$ with $r\geq3$, we provide a new construction for $G_0$ that shows that the number of steps of this process can be of order $\Theta(n^r)$. This answers a recent question of Noel and Ranganathan. To demonstrate that different running times can occur, we also prove that, if $H$ is $K_4^{(3)}$ minus an edge, then the maximum possible running time is $2n-\lfloor \log_2(n-2)\rfloor-6$. However, if $H$ is $K_5^{(3)}$ minus an edge, then the process can run for $\Theta(n^3)$ steps., Comment: Added two new results

Let $Q_{d,p}$ be the random subgraph of the $d$-dimensional hypercube $\{0,1\}^d$, where each edge is retained independently with probability $p$. We study the asymptotic number of independent sets in $Q_{d,p}$ as $d \to \infty$ for a wide range of parameters $p$, including values of $p$ tending to zero as fast as $\frac{C\log d}{d^{1/3}}$, constant values of $p$, and values of $p$ tending to one. The results extend to the hardcore model on $Q_{d,p}$, and are obtained by studying the closely related antiferromagnetic Ising model on the hypercube, which can be viewed as a positive-temperature hardcore model on the hypercube. These results generalize previous results by Galvin, Jenssen and Perkins on the hard-core model on the hypercube, corresponding to the case $p=1$, which extended Korshunov and Sapozhenko's classical result on the asymptotic number of independent sets in the hypercube., Comment: 44 pages

The notion of weak saturation was introduced by Bollob\'as in 1968. Let $F$ and $H$ be graphs. A spanning subgraph $G \subseteq F$ is weakly $(F,H)$-saturated if it contains no copy of $H$ but there exists an ordering $e_1,\ldots,e_t$ of $E(F)\setminus E(G)$ such that for each $i \in [t]$, the graph $G \cup \{e_1,\ldots,e_i\}$ contains a copy $H'$ of $H$ such that $e_i \in H'$. Define $wsat(F,H)$ to be the minimum number of edges in a weakly $(F,H)$-saturated graph. In this paper, we prove for all $t \ge 2$ and $n \ge 3t-3$, that $wsat(K_n,K_{t,t}) = (t-1)(n + 1 - t/2)$, and we determine the value of $wsat(K_n,K_{t-1,t})$ as well. For fixed $2 \le s < t$, we also obtain bounds on $wsat(K_n,K_{s,t})$ that are asymptotically tight., Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures

We study the Tur\'an number of long cycles in random graphs and in pseudo-random graphs. Denote by $ex(G(n,p),H)$ the random variable counting the number of edges in a largest subgraph of $G(n,p)$ without a copy of $H$. We determine the asymptotic value of $ex(G(n,p), C_t)$ where $C_t$ is a cycle of length $t$, for $p\geq \frac Cn$ and $A \log n \leq t \leq (1 - \varepsilon)n$. The typical behavior of $ex(G(n,p), C_t)$ depends substantially on the parity of $t$. In particular, our results match the classical result of Woodall on the Tur\'an number of long cycles, and can be seen as its random version, showing that the transference principle holds here as well. In fact, our techniques apply in a more general sparse pseudo-random setting. We also prove a robustness-type result, showing the likely existence of cycles of prescribed lengths in a random subgraph of a graph with a nearly optimal density., Comment: Two figures, 35 pages

Graph-bootstrap percolation, also known as weak saturation, was introduced by Bollob\'as in 1968. In this process, we start with initial "infected" set of edges $E_0$, and we infect new edges according to a predetermined rule. Given a graph $H$ and a set of previously infected edges $E_t\subseteq E(K_n)$, we infect a non-infected edge $e$ if it completes a new copy of $H$ in $G=([n],E_t\cup e)$. A question raised by Bollob\'as asks for the maximum time the process can run before it stabilizes. Bollob\'as, Przykucki, Riordan, and Sahasrabudhe considered this problem for the most natural case where $H=K_r$. They answered the question for $r\leq 4$ and gave a non-trivial lower bound for every $r\geq 5$. They also conjectured that the maximal running time is $o(n^2)$ for every integer $r$. In this paper we disprove their conjecture for every $r\geq 6$ and we give a better lower bound for the case $r=5$; in the proof we use the Behrend construction., Comment: 10 pages

We introduce a new type of positional games, played on a vertex set of a graph. Given a graph $G$, two players claim vertices of $G$, where the outcome of the game is determined by the subgraphs of $G$ induced by the vertices claimed by each player (or by one of them). We study classical positional games such as Maker-Breaker, Avoider-Enforcer, Waiter-Client and Client-Waiter games, where the board of the game is the vertex set of the binomial random graph $G\sim G(n,p)$. Under these settings, we consider those games where the target sets are the vertex sets of all graphs containing a copy of a fixed graph $H$, called $H$-games, and focus on those cases where $H$ is a clique or a cycle. We show that, similarly to the edge version of $H$-games, there is a strong connection between the threshold probability for these games and the one for the corresponding vertex Ramsey property (that is, the property that every $r$-vertex-coloring of $G(n,p)$ spans a monochromatic copy of $H$). Another similarity to the edge version of these games we demonstrate, is that the games in which $H$ is a triangle or a forest present a different behavior compared to the general case., Comment: 43 pages, 6 figures

We introduce and study a novel semi-random multigraph process, described as follows. The process starts with an empty graph on $n$ vertices. In every round of the process, one vertex $v$ of the graph is picked uniformly at random and independently of all previous rounds. We then choose an additional vertex (according to a strategy of our choice) and connect it by an edge to $v$. For various natural monotone increasing graph properties $P$, we prove tight upper and lower bounds on the minimum (extended over the set of all possible strategies) number of rounds required by the process to obtain, with high probability, a graph that satisfies $P$. Along the way, we show that the process is general enough to approximate (using suitable strategies) several well-studied random graph models.

In the 70s, Goldberg, and independently Seymour, conjectured that for any multigraph $G$, the chromatic index $\chi'(G)$ satisfies $\chi'(G)\leq \max \{\Delta(G)+1, \lceil\rho(G)\rceil\}$, where $\rho(G)=\max \{\frac {e(G[S])}{\lfloor |S|/2\rfloor} \mid S\subseteq V \}$. We show that their conjecture (in a stronger form) is true for random multigraphs. Let $M(n,m)$ be the probability space consisting of all loopless multigraphs with $n$ vertices and $m$ edges, in which $m$ pairs from $[n]$ are chosen independently at random with repetitions. Our result states that, for a given $m:=m(n)$, $M\sim M(n,m)$ typically satisfies $\chi'(G)=\max\{\Delta(G),\lceil\rho(G)\rceil\}$. In particular, we show that if $n$ is even and $m:=m(n)$, then $\chi'(M)=\Delta(M)$ for a typical $M\sim M(n,m)$. Furthermore, for a fixed $\varepsilon>0$, if $n$ is odd, then a typical $M\sim M(n,m)$ has $\chi'(M)=\Delta(M)$ for $m\leq (1-\varepsilon)n^3\log n$, and $\chi'(M)=\lceil\rho(M)\rceil$ for $m\geq (1+\varepsilon)n^3\log n$., Comment: 26 pages

For a finite family $\mathcal{F}$ of fixed graphs let $R_k(\mathcal{F})$ be the smallest integer $n$ for which every $k$-coloring of the edges of the complete graph $K_n$ yields a monochromatic copy of some $F\in\mathcal{F}$. We say that $\mathcal{F}$ is $k$-nice if for every graph $G$ with $\chi(G)=R_k(\mathcal{F})$ and for every $k$-coloring of $E(G)$ there exists a monochromatic copy of some $F\in\mathcal{F}$. It is easy to see that if $\mathcal{F}$ contains no forest, then it is not $k$-nice for any $k$. It seems plausible to conjecture that a (weak) converse holds, namely, for any finite family of graphs $\mathcal{F}$ that contains at least one forest, and for all $k\geq k_0(\mathcal{F})$ (or at least for infinitely many values of $k$), $\mathcal{F}$ is $k$-nice. We prove several (modest) results in support of this conjecture, showing, in particular, that it holds for each of the three families consisting of two connected graphs with 3 edges each and observing that it holds for any family $\mathcal{F}$ containing a forest with at most 2 edges. We also study some related problems and disprove a conjecture by Aharoni, Charbit and Howard regarding the size of matchings in regular 3-partite 3-uniform hypergraphs., Comment: 20 pages, 2 figures

An oriented $k$-uniform hypergraph is said to have Property O if for every linear order of the vertex set, there is some edge oriented consistently with the linear order. Recently Duffus, Kay and R\"{o}dl investigated the minimum number $f(k)$ of edges in a $k$-uniform hypergaph with Property O. They proved that $k! \leq f(k) \leq (k^2 \ln k) k!$, where the upper bound holds for $k$ sufficiently large. In this short note we improve their upper bound by a factor of $k \ln k$, showing that $f(k) \le \left(\lfloor \frac{k}{2} \rfloor +1 \right) k! - \lfloor \frac{k}{2} \rfloor (k-1)!$ for every $k\geq 3$. We also show that their lower bound is not tight. Furthermore, Duffus, Kay and R\"{o}dl also studied the minimum number $n(k)$ of vertices in a $k$-uniform hypergaph with Property O. For $k=3$ they showed $n(3) \in \{6,7,8,9\}$, and asked for the precise value of $n(3)$. Here we show $n(3)=6$., Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure

For a family of graphs $\mathcal{F}$, a graph $G$ is $\mathcal{F}$-universal if $G$ contains every graph in $\mathcal{F}$ as a (not necessarily induced) subgraph. For the family of all graphs on $n$ vertices and of maximum degree at most two, $\mathcal{H}(n,2)$, we prove that there exists a constant $C$ such that for $p \geq C \left( \frac{\log n}{n^2} \right)^{\frac{1}{3}}$, the binomial random graph $G(n,p)$ is typically $\mathcal{H}(n,2)$-universal. This bound is optimal up to the constant factor as illustrated in the seminal work of Johansson, Kahn, and Vu for triangle factors. Our result improves significantly on the previous best bound of $p \geq C \left(\frac{\log n}{n}\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}$ due to Kim and Lee. In fact, we prove the stronger result that for the family of all graphs on $n$ vertices, of maximum degree at most two and of girth at least $\ell$, $\mathcal{H}^{\ell}(n,2)$, $G(n,p)$ is typically $\mathcal H^{\ell}(n,2)$-universal when $p \geq C \left(\frac{\log n}{n^{\ell -1}}\right)^{\frac{1}{\ell}}$. This result is also optimal up to the constant factor. Our results verify (in a weak form) a classical conjecture of Kahn and Kalai.

We use a theorem by Ding, Lubetzky and Peres describing the structure of the giant component of random graphs in the strictly supercritical regime, in order to determine the typical size of MAXCUT of $G\sim G\left(n,\frac {1+\varepsilon}n\right)$ in terms of $\varepsilon$. We then apply this result to prove the following conjecture by Frieze and Pegden. For every $\varepsilon>0$ there exists $\ell_\varepsilon$ such that \whp $G\sim G(n,\frac {1+\varepsilon}n)$ is not homomorphic to the cycle on $2\ell_\varepsilon+1$ vertices. We also consider the coloring properties of biased random tournaments. A $p$-random tournament on $n$ vertices is obtained from the transitive tournament by reversing each edge independently with probability $p$. We show that for $p=\Theta(\frac 1n)$ the chromatic number of a $p$-random tournament behaves similarly to that of a random graph with the same edge probability. To treat the case $p=\frac {1+\varepsilon}n$ we use the aforementioned result on MAXCUT., Comment: 15 pages

A Hamilton cycle in a digraph is a cycle that passes through all the vertices, where all the arcs are oriented in the same direction. The problem of finding Hamilton cycles in directed graphs is well studied and is known to be hard. One of the main reasons for this, is that there is no general tool for finding Hamilton cycles in directed graphs comparable to the so called Pos?a `rotation-extension' technique for the undirected analogue. Let ${\mathcal D}(n,p)$ denote the random digraph on vertex set $[n]$, obtained by adding each directed edge independently with probability $p$. Here, we present a general and a very simple method, using known results, to attack problems of packing and counting Hamilton cycles in random directed graphs, for every edge-probability $p>\log^C(n)/n$. Our results are asymptotically optimal with respect to all parameters and apply equally well to the undirected case., Comment: 21 pages

In a $(1:b)$ Maker-Breaker game, a primary question is to find the maximal value of $b$ that allows Maker to win the game (that is, the critical bias $b^*$). Erd\H{o}s conjectured that the critical bias for many Maker-Breaker games played on the edge set of $K_n$ is the same as if both players claim edges randomly. Indeed, in many Maker-Breaker games, "Erd\H{o}s Paradigm" turned out to be true. Therefore, the next natural question to ask is the (typical) value of the critical bias for Maker-Breaker games where only one player claims edges randomly. A random-player Maker-Breaker game is a two-player game, played the same as an ordinary (biased) Maker-Breaker game, except that one player plays according to his best strategy and claims one element in each round, while the other plays randomly and claims $b$ elements. In fact, for every (ordinary) Maker-Breaker game, there are two different random-player versions; the $(1:b)$ random-Breaker game and the $(m:1)$ random-Maker game. We analyze the random-player version of several classical Maker-Breaker games such as the Hamilton cycle game, the perfect-matching game and the $k$-vertex-connectivity game (played on the edge sets of $K_n$). For each of these games we find or estimate the asymptotic values of $b$ that allow each player to typically win the game. In fact, we provide the "smart" player with an explicit winning strategy for the corresponding value of $b$., Comment: Jonas Groschwitz and Tibor Szabo worked independently on several of the problems presented in this paper, and obtained similar results. Their work is presented in the following Arxiv postings: arXiv:1507.06688, arXiv:1602.04628. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1408.5684

Let $G$ be a graph on $n$ vertices and let $k$ be a fixed positive integer. We denote by $\mathcal G_{\text{$k$-out}}(G)$ the probability space consisting of subgraphs of $G$ where each vertex $v\in V(G)$ randomly picks $k$ neighbors from $G$, independently from all other vertices. We show that if $\delta(G)=\omega(\log n)$ and $k\geq 2$, then the following holds for every $p=\omega(\log n/\delta(G))$. Let $H$ be a random graph obtained by keeping each $e\in E(G)$ with probability $p$ independently at random and then coloring its edges independently and uniformly at random with elements from the set $[kn]$. Then, w.h.p. $H$ contains $t:=(1-o(1))\delta(G)p/(2k)$ edge-disjoint graphs $H_1,...,H_t$ such that each of the $H_i$ is \emph{rainbow} (that is, all the edges are colored with distinct colors), and such that for every monotone increasing property of graphs $\mathcal P$ and for every $1\leq i\leq t$ we have $\Pr[\mathcal G_{\text{$k$-out}}(G)\models \mathcal P]\leq \Pr[H_i\models \mathcal P]+n^{-\omega(1)}$. Note that since (in this case) a typical member of $\mathcal G_{\text{$k$-out}}(G)$ has average degree roughly $2k$, this result is asymptotically best possible. We present several applications of this; for example, we use this result to prove that for $p=\omega(\log n/n)$ and $c=23n$, a graph $H\sim \mathcal G_{c}(K_n,p)$ w.h.p. contains $(1-o(1))np/46$ edge-disjoint rainbow Hamilton cycles. More generally, using a recent result of Frieze and Johansson, the same method allows us to prove that if $G$ has minimum degree $\delta(G)\geq (1+\varepsilon)n/2$, then there exist functions $c=O(n)$ and $t=\Theta(np)$ (depending on $\varepsilon$) such that the random subgraph $H\sim \mathcal G_{c}(G,p)$ w.h.p. contains $t$ edge-disjoint rainbow Hamilton cycles.

We consider random-turn positional games, introduced by Peres, Schramm, Sheffield and Wilson in 2007. A $p$-random-turn positional game is a two-player game, played the same as an ordinary positional game, except that instead of alternating turns, a coin is being tossed before each turn to decide the identity of the next player to move (the probability of Player I to move is $p$). We analyze the random-turn version of several classical Maker-Breaker games such as the game Box (introduced by Chv\'atal and Erd\H os in 1987), the Hamilton cycle game and the $k$-vertex-connectivity game (both played on the edge set of $K_n$). For each of these games we provide each of the players with a (randomized) efficient strategy which typically ensures his win in the asymptotic order of the minimum value of $p$ for which he typically wins the game, assuming optimal strategies of both players., Comment: 20 pages