Odd Covers of Complete Graphs and Hypergraphs

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Leader, Imre, Tan, Ta Sheng
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Leader, Imre
Tan, Ta Sheng
author_facet Leader, Imre
Tan, Ta Sheng
contents The `odd cover number' of a complete graph is the smallest size of a family of complete bipartite graphs that covers each edge an odd number of times. For $n$ odd, Buchanan, Clifton, Culver, Nie, O'Neill, Rombach and Yin showed that the odd cover number of $K_n$ is equal to $(n+1)/2$ or $(n+3)/2$, and they conjectured that it is always $(n+1)/2$. We prove this conjecture. For $n$ even, Babai and Frankl showed that the odd cover number of $K_n$ is always at least $n/2$, and the above authors and Radhakrishnan, Sen and Vishwanathan gave some values of $n$ for which equality holds. We give some new examples. Our constructions arise from some very symmetric constructions for the corresponding problem for complete hypergraphs. Thus the odd cover number of the complete 3-graph $K_n^{(3)}$ is the smallest number of complete 3-partite 3-graphs such that each 3-set is in an odd number of them. We show that the odd cover number of $K_n^{(3)}$ is exactly $n/2$ for even $n$, and we show that for odd $n$ it is $(n-1)/2$ for infinitely many values of $n$. We also show that for $r=3$ and $r=4$ the odd cover number of $K_n^{(r)}$ is strictly less than the partition number, answering a question of Buchanan, Clifton, Culver, Nie, O'Neill, Rombach and Yin for those values of $r$.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_05053
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Odd Covers of Complete Graphs and Hypergraphs
Leader, Imre
Tan, Ta Sheng
Combinatorics
05C70
The `odd cover number' of a complete graph is the smallest size of a family of complete bipartite graphs that covers each edge an odd number of times. For $n$ odd, Buchanan, Clifton, Culver, Nie, O'Neill, Rombach and Yin showed that the odd cover number of $K_n$ is equal to $(n+1)/2$ or $(n+3)/2$, and they conjectured that it is always $(n+1)/2$. We prove this conjecture. For $n$ even, Babai and Frankl showed that the odd cover number of $K_n$ is always at least $n/2$, and the above authors and Radhakrishnan, Sen and Vishwanathan gave some values of $n$ for which equality holds. We give some new examples. Our constructions arise from some very symmetric constructions for the corresponding problem for complete hypergraphs. Thus the odd cover number of the complete 3-graph $K_n^{(3)}$ is the smallest number of complete 3-partite 3-graphs such that each 3-set is in an odd number of them. We show that the odd cover number of $K_n^{(3)}$ is exactly $n/2$ for even $n$, and we show that for odd $n$ it is $(n-1)/2$ for infinitely many values of $n$. We also show that for $r=3$ and $r=4$ the odd cover number of $K_n^{(r)}$ is strictly less than the partition number, answering a question of Buchanan, Clifton, Culver, Nie, O'Neill, Rombach and Yin for those values of $r$.
title Odd Covers of Complete Graphs and Hypergraphs
topic Combinatorics
05C70
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.05053