Dependent random choice

In mathematics, dependent random choice is a probabilistic technique that shows how to find a large set of vertices in a dense graph such that every small subset of vertices has many common neighbors. It is a useful tool to embed a graph into another graph with many edges. Thus it has its application in extremal graph theory, additive combinatorics and Ramsey theory.

Statement of theorem

Let , and suppose:[1][2][3][4][5]

Every graph on vertices with at least edges contains a subset of vertices with such that for all with , has at least common neighbors.

Proof

The basic idea is to choose the set of vertices randomly. However, instead of choosing each vertex uniformly at random, the procedure randomly chooses a list of vertices first and then chooses common neighbors as the set of vertices. The hope is that in this way, the chosen set would be more likely to have more common neighbors.

Formally, let be a list of vertices chosen uniformly at random from with replacement (allowing repetition). Let be the common neighborhood of . The expected value of is

For every -element subset of , contains if and only if is contained in the common neighborhood of , which occurs with probability An is bad if it has less than common neighbors. Then for each fixed -element subset of , it is contained in with probability less than . Therefore by linearity of expectation,

To eliminate bad subsets, we the procedure is to exclude one element in each bad subset. The number of remaining elements is at least , whose expected value is at least Consequently, there exists a such that there are at least elements in remaining after getting rid of all bad -element subsets. The set of the remaining elements expresses the desired properties.

Applications

Turán numbers of a bipartite graph

DRC can help find the Turán number. Using appropriate parameters, if is a bipartite graph in which all vertices in have degree at most , then the extremal number where only depends on .[1][5]

Formally, if and is a sufficiently large constant such that If then

and so the assumption of dependent random choice holds. Hence, for each graph with at least edges, there exists a vertex subset of size satisfying that every -subset of has at least common neighbors. By embedding into by embedding into arbitrarily and then embedding the vertices in one by one, then for each vertex in , it has at most neighbors in , which shows that their images in have at least common neighbors. Thus can be embedded into one of the common neighbors while avoiding collisions.

This can be generalized to degenerate graphs using the variation of dependent random choice.

Embedding a 1-subdivision of a complete graph

DRC can be applied directly to show that if is a graph on vertices and edges, then contains a 1-subdivision of a complete graph with vertices. This can be shown in a similar way to the above proof of the bound on Turán number of a bipartite graph.[1]

Indeed, if we set , we have (since )

and so the DRC assumption holds. Since a 1-subdivision of the complete graph on vertices is a bipartite graph with parts of size and where every vertex in the second part has degree two, the embedding argument in the proof of the bound on Turán number of a bipartite graph produces the desired result.

Variation

A stronger version finds two subsets of vertices in a dense graph so that every small subset of vertices in has a lot of common neighbors in .

Formally, let be some positive integers with , and let be some real number. Suppose that the following constraints hold:

Then every graph on vertices with at least edges contains two subsets of vertices so that any vertices in have at least common neighbors in .[1]

Extremal number of a degenerate bipartite graph

Using this stronger statement, one can upper bound the extremal number of -degenerate bipartite graph: for each -degenerate bipartite graph with at most vertices, the extremal number ist at most [1]

Ramsey number of a degenerate bipartite graph

This statement can be also applied to obtain an upper bound of the Ramsey number of a degenerate bipartite graphs. If is a fixed integer, then for every bipartite -degenerate bipartite graph on vertices, the Ramsey number is of the order [1]

References

  1. Fox, Jacob; Sudakov, Benny (2011). "Dependent random choice". Random Structures & Algorithms. 38 (1–2): 68–99. doi:10.1002/rsa.20344. hdl:1721.1/70097. ISSN 1098-2418. S2CID 2321395.
  2. Verstraëte, Jacques (2015). "6 - Dependent Random Choice" (PDF). University of California San Diego. S2CID 47638896. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-05-19.
  3. Kostochka, A. V.; Rödl, V. (2001). "On graphs with small Ramsey numbers*". Journal of Graph Theory. 37 (4): 198–204. doi:10.1002/jgt.1014. ISSN 1097-0118. S2CID 12292577.
  4. Sudakov, Benny (2003-05-01). "A few remarks on Ramsey–Turán-type problems". Journal of Combinatorial Theory. Series B. 88 (1): 99–106. doi:10.1016/S0095-8956(02)00038-2. ISSN 0095-8956.
  5. Alon, Noga; Krivelevich, Michael; Sudakov, Benny (November 2003). "Turán Numbers of Bipartite Graphs and Related Ramsey-Type Questions". Combinatorics, Probability and Computing. 12 (5+6): 477–494. doi:10.1017/S0963548303005741. ISSN 1469-2163.

Further reading

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