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arXiv · 2409.19908

Independent Sets in Hypergraphs

Jacques Verstraete·Chase Wilson
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Abstract

A theorem of Shearer states that every $n$-vertex triangle-free graph of maximum degree $d \geq 2$ contains an independent set of size at least $(d\log d - d + 1)/(d - 1)^2 \cdot n$. Ajtai, Komlós, Pintz, Spencer and Szemerédi proved that every $(r + 1)$-uniform $n$-vertex ``uncrowded'' hypergraph of maximum degree $d \geq 1$ has an independent set of size at least $c_r(\log d)^{1/r}/d^{1/r} \cdot n$ for some $c_r > 0$ depending only on $r$. Shearer asked whether his method for triangle-free graphs could be extended to uniform hypergraphs. In this paper, we answer this in the affirmative, thereby giving a short proof of the theorem of Ajtai, Komlós, Pintz, Spencer and Szemerédi for a wider class of ``locally sparse'' hypergraphs.

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Jacques Verstraete, Chase Wilson. 2025-12-16. Independent Sets in Hypergraphs. https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.19908

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