Let G be a graph on n vertices and with maximum degree Δ, and let k be an integer. The k-recolouring graph of G is the graph whose vertices are k-colourings of G and where two k-colourings are adjacent if they differ at exactly one vertex. It is well known that the k-recolouring graph is connected for $k\geq \Delta+2$ . Feghali, Johnson and Paulusma (J. Graph Theory83 (2016) 340–358) showed that the (Δ + 1)-recolouring graph is composed by a unique connected component of size at least 2 and (possibly many) isolated vertices.

In this paper, we study the proportion of isolated vertices (also called frozen colourings) in the (Δ + 1)-recolouring graph. Our first contribution is to show that if G is connected, the proportion of frozen colourings of G is exponentially smaller in n than the total number of colourings. This motivates the use of the Glauber dynamics to approximate the number of (Δ + 1)-colourings of a graph. In contrast to the conjectured mixing time of O(nlog n) for $k\geq \Delta+2$ colours, we show that the mixing time of the Glauber dynamics for (Δ + 1)-colourings restricted to non-frozen colourings can be Ω(n2). Finally, we prove some results about the existence of graphs with large girth and frozen colourings, and study frozen colourings in random regular graphs.

Given a fixed graph H, a real number p (0, 1) and an infinite Erdös–Rényi graph G ∼ G(∞, p), how many adjacency queries do we have to make to find a copy of H inside G with probability at least 1/2? Determining this number f(H, p) is a variant of the subgraph query problem introduced by Ferber, Krivelevich, Sudakov and Vieira. For every graph H, we improve the trivial upper bound of f(H, p) = O(p−d), where d is the degeneracy of H, by exhibiting an algorithm that finds a copy of H in time O(p−d) as p goes to 0. Furthermore, we prove that there are 2-degenerate graphs which require p−2+o(1) queries, showing for the first time that there exist graphs H for which f(H, p) does not grow like a constant power of p−1 as p goes to 0. Finally, we answer a question of Feige, Gamarnik, Neeman, Rácz and Tetali by showing that for any δ < 2, there exists α < 2 such that one cannot find a clique of order α log2n in G(n, 1/2) in nδ queries.

Let M be an n × m matrix of independent Rademacher (±1) random variables. It is well known that if $n \leq m$, then M is of full rank with high probability. We show that this property is resilient to adversarial changes to M. More precisely, if $m \ge n + {n^{1 - \varepsilon /6}}$, then even after changing the sign of (1 – ε)m/2 entries, M is still of full rank with high probability. Note that this is asymptotically best possible as one can easily make any two rows proportional with at most m/2 changes. Moreover, this theorem gives an asymptotic solution to a slightly weakened version of a conjecture made by Van Vu in [17].

In the group testing problem the aim is to identify a small set of k ⁓ nθ infected individuals out of a population size n, 0 < θ < 1. We avail ourselves of a test procedure capable of testing groups of individuals, with the test returning a positive result if and only if at least one individual in the group is infected. The aim is to devise a test design with as few tests as possible so that the set of infected individuals can be identified correctly with high probability. We establish an explicit sharp information-theoretic/algorithmic phase transition minf for non-adaptive group testing, where all tests are conducted in parallel. Thus with more than minf tests the infected individuals can be identified in polynomial time with high probability, while learning the set of infected individuals is information-theoretically impossible with fewer tests. In addition, we develop an optimal adaptive scheme where the tests are conducted in two stages.

It has been conjectured that, for any fixed \[{\text{r}} \geqslant 2\] and sufficiently large n, there is a monochromatic Hamiltonian Berge-cycle in every \[({\text{r}} - 1)\]-colouring of the edges of \[{\text{K}}_{\text{n}}^{\text{r}}\], the complete r-uniform hypergraph on n vertices. In this paper we prove this conjecture.

The disjointness graph G = G(𝒮) of a set of segments 𝒮 in ${\mathbb{R}^d}$, $$d \ge 2$$, is a graph whose vertex set is 𝒮 and two vertices are connected by an edge if and only if the corresponding segments are disjoint. We prove that the chromatic number of G satisfies $\chi (G) \le {(\omega (G))^4} + {(\omega (G))^3}$, where ω(G) denotes the clique number of G. It follows that 𝒮 has Ω(n1/5) pairwise intersecting or pairwise disjoint elements. Stronger bounds are established for lines in space, instead of segments.

We show that computing ω(G) and χ(G) for disjointness graphs of lines in space are NP-hard tasks. However, we can design efficient algorithms to compute proper colourings of G in which the number of colours satisfies the above upper bounds. One cannot expect similar results for sets of continuous arcs, instead of segments, even in the plane. We construct families of arcs whose disjointness graphs are triangle-free (ω(G) = 2), but whose chromatic numbers are arbitrarily large.

We answer four questions from a recent paper of Rao and Shinkar [17] on Lipschitz bijections between functions from {0, 1}n to {0, 1}. (1) We show that there is no O(1)-bi-Lipschitz bijection from Dictator to XOR such that each output bit depends on O(1) input bits. (2) We give a construction for a mapping from XOR to Majority which has average stretch $O(\sqrt{n})$ , matching a previously known lower bound. (3) We give a 3-Lipschitz embedding $\phi \colon \{0,1\}^n \to \{0,1\}^{2n+1}$ such that $${\rm{XOR }}(x) = {\rm{ Majority }}(\phi (x))$$ for all $x \in \{0,1\}^n$ . (4) We show that with high probability there is an O(1)-bi-Lipschitz mapping from Dictator to a uniformly random balanced function.

The size-Ramsey number of a graph F is the smallest number of edges in a graph G with the Ramsey property for F, that is, with the property that any 2-colouring of the edges of G contains a monochromatic copy of F. We prove that the size-Ramsey number of the grid graph on n × n vertices is bounded from above by n3+o(1).

We investigate a covering problem in 3-uniform hypergraphs (3-graphs): Given a 3-graph F, what is c1(n, F), the least integer d such that if G is an n-vertex 3-graph with minimum vertex-degree $\delta_1(G)>d$ then every vertex of G is contained in a copy of F in G?

We asymptotically determine c1(n, F) when F is the generalized triangle $K_4^{(3)-}$ , and we give close to optimal bounds in the case where F is the tetrahedron $K_4^{(3)}$ (the complete 3-graph on 4 vertices).

This latter problem turns out to be a special instance of the following problem for graphs: Given an n-vertex graph G with $m> n^2/4$ edges, what is the largest t such that some vertex in G must be contained in t triangles? We give upper bound constructions for this problem that we conjecture are asymptotically tight. We prove our conjecture for tripartite graphs, and use flag algebra computations to give some evidence of its truth in the general case.

We prove a ‘resilience’ version of Dirac’s theorem in the setting of random regular graphs. More precisely, we show that whenever d is sufficiently large compared to $\epsilon > 0$ , a.a.s. the following holds. Let $G'$ be any subgraph of the random n-vertex d-regular graph $G_{n,d}$ with minimum degree at least $$(1/2 + \epsilon )d$$ . Then $G'$ is Hamiltonian.

This proves a conjecture of Ben-Shimon, Krivelevich and Sudakov. Our result is best possible: firstly the condition that d is large cannot be omitted, and secondly the minimum degree bound cannot be improved.

We explore the tree limits recently defined by Elek and Tardos. In particular, we find tree limits for many classes of random trees. We give general theorems for three classes of conditional Galton–Watson trees and simply generated trees, for split trees and generalized split trees (as defined here), and for trees defined by a continuous-time branching process. These general results include, for example, random labelled trees, ordered trees, random recursive trees, preferential attachment trees, and binary search trees.

Let $\gamma(G)$ and $${\gamma _ \circ }(G)$$ denote the sizes of a smallest dominating set and smallest independent dominating set in a graph G, respectively. One of the first results in probabilistic combinatorics is that if G is an n-vertex graph of minimum degree at least d, then

$$\begin{equation}\gamma(G) \leq \frac{n}{d}(\log d + 1).\end{equation}$$

In this paper the main result is that if G is any n-vertex d-regular graph of girth at least five, then

$$\begin{equation}\gamma_(G) \leq \frac{n}{d}(\log d + c)\end{equation}$$

$d \rightarrow \infty$

$$\begin{equation}\gamma_(G) \sim \frac{n}{d}\log d.\end{equation}$$

Furthermore, if G is a disjoint union of ${n}/{(2d)}$ complete bipartite graphs $K_{d,d}$ , then ${\gamma_\circ}(G) = \frac{n}{2}$ . We also prove that there are n-vertex graphs G of minimum degree d and whose maximum degree grows not much faster than d log d such that ${\gamma_\circ}(G) \sim {n}/{2}$ as $d \rightarrow \infty$ . Therefore both the girth and regularity conditions are required for the main result.

In this short note we prove that every tournament contains the k-th power of a directed path of linear length. This improves upon recent results of Yuster and of Girão. We also give a complete solution for this problem when k=2, showing that there is always a square of a directed path of length , which is best possible.

Magnant and Martin conjectured that the vertex set of any d-regular graph G on n vertices can be partitioned into $n / (d+1)$ paths (there exists a simple construction showing that this bound would be best possible). We prove this conjecture when $d = \Omega(n)$ , improving a result of Han, who showed that in this range almost all vertices of G can be covered by $n / (d+1) + 1$ vertex-disjoint paths. In fact our proof gives a partition of V(G) into cycles. We also show that, if $d = \Omega(n)$ and G is bipartite, then V(G) can be partitioned into n/(2d) paths (this bound is tight for bipartite graphs).

In this work we consider three well-studied broadcast protocols: push, pull and push&pull. A key property of all these models, which is also an important reason for their popularity, is that they are presumed to be very robust, since they are simple, randomized and, crucially, do not utilize explicitly the global structure of the underlying graph. While sporadic results exist, there has been no systematic theoretical treatment quantifying the robustness of these models. Here we investigate this question with respect to two orthogonal aspects: (adversarial) modifications of the underlying graph and message transmission failures.

We explore in particular the following notion of local resilience: beginning with a graph, we investigate up to which fraction of the edges an adversary may delete at each vertex, so that the protocols need significantly more rounds to broadcast the information. Our main findings establish a separation among the three models. On one hand, pull is robust with respect to all parameters that we consider. On the other hand, push may slow down significantly, even if the adversary may modify the degrees of the vertices by an arbitrarily small positive fraction only. Finally, push&pull is robust when no message transmission failures are considered, otherwise it may be slowed down.

On the technical side, we develop two novel methods for the analysis of randomized rumour-spreading protocols. First, we exploit the notion of self-bounding functions to facilitate significantly the round-based analysis: we show that for any graph the variance of the growth of informed vertices is bounded by its expectation, so that concentration results follow immediately. Second, in order to control adversarial modifications of the graph we make use of a powerful tool from extremal graph theory, namely Szemerédi’s Regularity Lemma.

We prove a number of results related to a problem of Po-Shen Loh [9], which is equivalent to a problem in Ramsey theory. Let a = (a1, a2, a3) and b = (b1, b2, b3) be two triples of integers. Define a to be 2-less than b if ai < bi for at least two values of i, and define a sequence a1, …, am of triples to be 2-increasing if ar is 2-less than as whenever r < s. Loh asks how long a 2-increasing sequence can be if all the triples take values in {1, 2, …, n}, and gives a log* improvement over the trivial upper bound of n2 by using the triangle removal lemma. In the other direction, a simple construction gives a lower bound of n3/2. We look at this problem and a collection of generalizations, improving some of the known bounds, pointing out connections to other well-known problems in extremal combinatorics, and asking a number of further questions.

We study and classify proper q-colourings of the ℤd lattice, identifying three regimes where different combinatorial behaviour holds. (1) When $q\le d+1$ , there exist frozen colourings, that is, proper q-colourings of ℤd which cannot be modified on any finite subset. (2) We prove a strong list-colouring property which implies that, when $q\ge d+2$ , any proper q-colouring of the boundary of a box of side length $n \ge d+2$ can be extended to a proper q-colouring of the entire box. (3) When $q\geq 2d+1$ , the latter holds for any $n \ge 1$ . Consequently, we classify the space of proper q-colourings of the ℤd lattice by their mixing properties.

Motivated by problems in percolation theory, we study the following two-player positional game. Let Λm×n be a rectangular grid-graph with m vertices in each row and n vertices in each column. Two players, Maker and Breaker, play in alternating turns. On each of her turns, Maker claims p (as yet unclaimed) edges of the board Λm×n, while on each of his turns Breaker claims q (as yet unclaimed) edges of the board and destroys them. Maker wins the game if she manages to claim all the edges of a crossing path joining the left-hand side of the board to its right-hand side, otherwise Breaker wins. We call this game the (p, q)-crossing game on Λm×n.

Given m, n ∈ ℕ, for which pairs (p, q) does Maker have a winning strategy for the (p, q)-crossing game on Λm×n? The (1, 1)-case corresponds exactly to the popular game of Bridg-it, which is well understood due to it being a special case of the older Shannon switching game. In this paper we study the general (p, q)-case. Our main result is to establish the following transition.

• If p ≥ 2q, then Maker wins the game on arbitrarily long versions of the narrowest board possible, that is, Maker has a winning strategy for the (2q, q)-crossing game on Λm×(q+1) for any m ∈ ℕ.

• If p ≤ 2q − 1, then for every width n of the board, Breaker has a winning strategy for the (p, q)-crossing game on Λm×n for all sufficiently large board-lengths m.

Our winning strategies in both cases adapt more generally to other grids and crossing games. In addition we pose many new questions and problems.

A family of vectors in [k]n is said to be intersecting if any two of its elements agree on at least one coordinate. We prove, for fixed k ≥ 3, that the size of any intersecting subfamily of [k]n invariant under a transitive group of symmetries is o(kn), which is in stark contrast to the case of the Boolean hypercube (where k = 2). Our main contribution addresses limitations of existing technology: while there are now methods, first appearing in work of Ellis and the third author, for using spectral machinery to tackle problems in extremal set theory involving symmetry, this machinery relies crucially on the interplay between up-sets, biased product measures, and threshold behaviour in the Boolean hypercube, features that are notably absent in the problem considered here. To circumvent these barriers, introducing ideas that seem of independent interest, we develop a variant of the sharp threshold machinery that applies at the level of products of posets.

Drift analysis is one of the state-of-the-art techniques for the runtime analysis of randomized search heuristics (RSHs) such as evolutionary algorithms (EAs), simulated annealing, etc. The vast majority of existing drift theorems yield bounds on the expected value of the hitting time for a target state, for example the set of optimal solutions, without making additional statements on the distribution of this time. We address this lack by providing a general drift theorem that includes bounds on the upper and lower tail of the hitting time distribution. The new tail bounds are applied to prove very precise sharp-concentration results on the running time of a simple EA on standard benchmark problems, including the class of general linear functions. On all these problems, the probability of deviating by an r-factor in lower-order terms of the expected time decreases exponentially with r. The usefulness of the theorem outside the theory of RSHs is demonstrated by deriving tail bounds on the number of cycles in random permutations. All these results handle a position-dependent (variable) drift that was not covered by previous drift theorems with tail bounds. Finally, user-friendly specializations of the general drift theorem are given.