Turán's problem for hypergraphs

Importance: Medium ✭✭
Author(s): Turan, Paul
Keywords:
Recomm. for undergrads: no
Posted by: fhavet
on: March 12th, 2013
Conjecture   Every simple $ 3 $-uniform hypergraph on $ 3n $ vertices which contains no complete $ 3 $-uniform hypergraph on four vertices has at most $ \frac12 n^2(5n-3) $ hyperedges.
Conjecture   Every simple $ 3 $-uniform hypergraph on $ 2n $ vertices which contains no complete $ 3 $-uniform hypergraph on five vertices has at most $ n^2(n-1) $ hyperedges.

Let $ V $ be an $ n $-set. A $ k $-uniform hypergraph $ (V,{\cal F}) $ is complete if $ {\cal   F}={V \choose k} $, the set of all $ {n\choose{k}} $ $ k $-subsets of $ V $.

Let $ \{X,Y,Z\} $ be a partition of $ V $ into three sets which are as nearly equal in size as possible, and let $ {\cal F} $ be the union of $ \{\{x,y,z\}:x\in X, y\in Y, z\in Z\} $, $ \{\{x_1,x_2,y\}:x_1\in X, x_2\in X, y\in Y\} $, $ \{\{y_1,y_2,z\}:y_1\in Y, y_2\in Y, z\in Z\} $, and $ \{\{z_1,z_2,x\}:z_1\in Z, z_2\in Z, x\in X\} $. This $ 3 $-uniform hypergraph has $ \frac12 n^2(5n-3) $ hyperedges and contains no complete $ 3 $-uniform hypergraph on four vertices. Hence the first conjecture asserts that this hypergraph is extremal with this prpoerty.

Let $ \{X,Y\} $ be a partition of $ V $ into two sets which are as nearly equal in size as possible, and let $ {\cal F} $ be the set of all $ 3 $-subsets of $ V $ which intersect both $ X $ and $ Y $. This $ 3 $-uniform hypergraph has $ n^2(n-1) $ hyperedges and contains no complete $ 3 $-uniform hypergraph on five vertices. Hence the second conjecture asserts that this hypergraph is extremal with this property.

Bibliography

*[T] P. Turán, Eine Extremalaufgabe aus der Graphentheorie. Mat. Fiz. Lapok 48 (1941), 436--452.


* indicates original appearance(s) of problem.