On the Chromatic Thresholds of Hypergraphs

József Balogh, Jane Butterfield, Ping Hu, John Lenz, Dhruv Mubayi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Let be a family of r-uniform hypergraphs. The chromatic threshold of is the infimum of all non-negative reals c such that the subfamily of comprising hypergraphs H with minimum degree at least has bounded chromatic number. This parameter has a long history for graphs (r = 2), and in this paper we begin its systematic study for hypergraphs. Łuczak and Thomassé recently proved that the chromatic threshold of the so-called near bipartite graphs is zero, and our main contribution is to generalize this result to r-uniform hypergraphs. For this class of hypergraphs, we also show that the exact Turán number is achieved uniquely by the complete (r + 1)-partite hypergraph with nearly equal part sizes. This is one of very few infinite families of non-degenerate hypergraphs whose Turán number is determined exactly. In an attempt to generalize Thomassen's result that the chromatic threshold of triangle-free graphs is 1/3, we prove bounds for the chromatic threshold of the family of 3-uniform hypergraphs not containing {abc, abd, cde}, the so-called generalized triangle. In order to prove upper bounds we introduce the concept of fibre bundles, which can be thought of as a hypergraph analogue of directed graphs. This leads to the notion of fibre bundle dimension, a structural property of fibre bundles that is based on the idea of Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimension in hypergraphs. Our lower bounds follow from explicit constructions, many of which use a hypergraph analogue of the Kneser graph. Using methods from extremal set theory, we prove that these Kneser hypergraphs have unbounded chromatic number. This generalizes a result of Szemerédi for graphs and might be of independent interest. Many open problems remain.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)172-212
Number of pages41
JournalCombinatorics Probability and Computing
Volume25
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 1 2016

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • Statistics and Probability
  • Computational Theory and Mathematics
  • Applied Mathematics

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