For a subset $A$ of an abelian group $G$, given its size $|A|$, its doubling $\kappa =|A+A|/|A|$, and a parameter $s$ which is small compared to $|A|$, we study the size of the largest sumset $A+A'$ that can be guaranteed for a subset $A'$ of $A$ of size at most $s$. We show that a subset $A'\subseteq A$ of size at most $s$ can be found so that $|A+A'| = \Omega (\!\min\! (\kappa ^{1/3},s)|A|)$. Thus, a sumset significantly larger than the Cauchy–Davenport bound can be guaranteed by a bounded size subset assuming that the doubling $\kappa$ is large. Building up on the same ideas, we resolve a conjecture of Bollobás, Leader and Tiba that for subsets $A,B$ of $\mathbb{F}_p$ of size at most $\alpha p$ for an appropriate constant $\alpha \gt 0$, one only needs three elements $b_1,b_2,b_3\in B$ to guarantee $|A+\{b_1,b_2,b_3\}|\ge |A|+|B|-1$. Allowing the use of larger subsets $A'$, we show that for sets $A$ of bounded doubling, one only needs a subset $A'$ with $o(|A|)$ elements to guarantee that $A+A'=A+A$. We also address another conjecture and a question raised by Bollobás, Leader and Tiba on high-dimensional analogues and sets whose sumset cannot be saturated by a bounded size subset.

For graphs $G$ and $H$, the Ramsey number $r(G,H)$ is the smallest positive integer $N$ such that any red/blue edge colouring of the complete graph $K_N$ contains either a red $G$ or a blue $H$. A book $B_n$ is a graph consisting of $n$ triangles all sharing a common edge.

Recently, Conlon, Fox, and Wigderson conjectured that for any $0\lt \alpha \lt 1$, the random lower bound $r(B_{\lceil \alpha n\rceil },B_n)\ge (\sqrt{\alpha }+1)^2n+o(n)$ is not tight. In other words, there exists some constant $\beta \gt (\sqrt{\alpha }+1)^2$ such that $r(B_{\lceil \alpha n\rceil },B_n)\ge \beta n$ for all sufficiently large $n$. This conjecture holds for every $\alpha \lt 1/6$ by a result of Nikiforov and Rousseau from 2005, which says that in this range $r(B_{\lceil \alpha n\rceil },B_n)=2n+3$ for all sufficiently large $n$.

We disprove the conjecture of Conlon, Fox, and Wigderson. Indeed, we show that the random lower bound is asymptotically tight for every $1/4\leq \alpha \leq 1$. Moreover, we show that for any $1/6\leq \alpha \le 1/4$ and large $n$, $r(B_{\lceil \alpha n\rceil }, B_n)\le \left (\frac 32+3\alpha \right ) n+o(n)$, where the inequality is asymptotically tight when $\alpha =1/6$ or $1/4$. We also give a lower bound of $r(B_{\lceil \alpha n\rceil }, B_n)$ for $1/6\le \alpha \lt \frac{52-16\sqrt{3}}{121}\approx 0.2007$, showing that the random lower bound is not tight, i.e., the conjecture of Conlon, Fox, and Wigderson holds in this interval.

We show that for every $\eta \gt 0$ every sufficiently large $n$-vertex oriented graph $D$ of minimum semidegree exceeding $(1+\eta )\frac k2$ contains every balanced antidirected tree with $k$ edges and bounded maximum degree, if $k\ge \eta n$. In particular, this asymptotically confirms a conjecture of the first author for long antidirected paths and dense digraphs.

Further, we show that in the same setting, $D$ contains every $k$-edge antidirected subdivision of a sufficiently small complete graph, if the paths of the subdivision that have length $1$ or $2$ span a forest. As a special case, we can find all antidirected cycles of length at most $k$.

Finally, we address a conjecture of Addario-Berry, Havet, Linhares Sales, Reed, and Thomassé for antidirected trees in digraphs. We show that this conjecture is asymptotically true in $n$-vertex oriented graphs for all balanced antidirected trees of bounded maximum degree and of size linear in $n$.

A result of Gyárfás [12] exactly determines the size of a largest monochromatic component in an arbitrary $r$-colouring of the complete $k$-uniform hypergraph $K_n^k$ when $k\geq 2$ and $k\in \{r-1,r\}$. We prove a result which says that if one replaces $K_n^k$ in Gyárfás’ theorem by any ‘expansive’ $k$-uniform hypergraph on $n$ vertices (that is, a $k$-uniform hypergraph $G$ on $n$ vertices in which $e(V_1, \ldots, V_k)\gt 0$ for all disjoint sets $V_1, \ldots, V_k\subseteq V(G)$ with $|V_i|\gt \alpha$ for all $i\in [k]$), then one gets a largest monochromatic component of essentially the same size (within a small error term depending on $r$ and $\alpha$). As corollaries we recover a number of known results about large monochromatic components in random hypergraphs and random Steiner triple systems, often with drastically improved bounds on the error terms.

Gyárfás’ result is equivalent to the dual problem of determining the smallest possible maximum degree of an arbitrary $r$-partite $r$-uniform hypergraph $H$ with $n$ edges in which every set of $k$ edges has a common intersection. In this language, our result says that if one replaces the condition that every set of $k$ edges has a common intersection with the condition that for every collection of $k$ disjoint sets $E_1, \ldots, E_k\subseteq E(H)$ with $|E_i|\gt \alpha$, there exists $(e_1, \ldots, e_k)\in E_1\times \cdots \times E_k$ such that $e_1\cap \cdots \cap e_k\neq \emptyset$, then the smallest possible maximum degree of $H$ is essentially the same (within a small error term depending on $r$ and $\alpha$). We prove our results in this dual setting.

Tao and Vu showed that every centrally symmetric convex progression $C\subset \mathbb{Z}^d$ is contained in a generalized arithmetic progression of size $d^{O(d^2)} \# C$. Berg and Henk improved the size bound to $d^{O(d\log d)} \# C$. We obtain the bound $d^{O(d)} \# C$, which is sharp up to the implied constant and is of the same form as the bound in the continuous setting given by John’s theorem.

We give algorithms for approximating the partition function of the ferromagnetic $q$-color Potts model on graphs of maximum degree $d$. Our primary contribution is a fully polynomial-time approximation scheme for $d$-regular graphs with an expansion condition at low temperatures (that is, bounded away from the order-disorder threshold). The expansion condition is much weaker than in previous works; for example, the expansion exhibited by the hypercube suffices. The main improvements come from a significantly sharper analysis of standard polymer models; we use extremal graph theory and applications of Karger’s algorithm to count cuts that may be of independent interest. It is #BIS-hard to approximate the partition function at low temperatures on bounded-degree graphs, so our algorithm can be seen as evidence that hard instances of #BIS are rare. We also obtain efficient algorithms in the Gibbs uniqueness region for bounded-degree graphs. While our high-temperature proof follows more standard polymer model analysis, our result holds in the largest-known range of parameters $d$ and $q$.

The protection number of a vertex $v$ in a tree is the length of the shortest path from $v$ to any leaf contained in the maximal subtree where $v$ is the root. In this paper, we determine the distribution of the maximum protection number of a vertex in simply generated trees, thereby refining a recent result of Devroye, Goh, and Zhao. Two different cases can be observed: if the given family of trees allows vertices of outdegree $1$, then the maximum protection number is on average logarithmic in the tree size, with a discrete double-exponential limiting distribution. If no such vertices are allowed, the maximum protection number is doubly logarithmic in the tree size and concentrated on at most two values. These results are obtained by studying the singular behaviour of the generating functions of trees with bounded protection number. While a general distributional result by Prodinger and Wagner can be used in the first case, we prove a variant of that result in the second case.