Color critical hypergraphs and forbidden configurations

Abstract

The present paper connects sharpenings of Sauer's bound on forbidden configurations with color critical hypergraphs. We define a matrix to be \emphsimple if it is a $(0,1)-matrix$ with no repeated columns. Let $F$ be $a k× l (0,1)-matrix$ (the forbidden configuration). Assume $A$ is an $m× n$ simple matrix which has no submatrix which is a row and column permutation of $F$. We define $forb(m,F)$ as the best possible upper bound on n, for such a matrix $A$, which depends on m and $F$. It is known that $forb(m,F)=O(m^k)$ for any $F$, and Sauer's bond states that $forb(m,F)=O(m^k-1)$ fore simple $F$. We give sufficient condition for non-simple $F$ to have the same bound using linear algebra methods to prove a generalization of a result of Lovász on color critical hypergraphs.

Keywords

• forbidden configuration
• color critical hypergraph
• linear algebra method
• [info.info-dm] computer science [cs]/discrete mathematics [cs.dm]
• [math.math-co] mathematics [math]/combinatorics [math.co]