Showing papers by "Asaf Shapira published in 2017"

Removal lemmas with polynomial bounds

Abstract: We give new sufficient and necessary criteria guaranteeing that a hereditary graph property can be tested with a polynomial query complexity. Although both are simple combinatorial criteria, they imply almost all prior positive and negative results of this type, as well as many new ones. One striking application of our results is that every semi-algebraic graph property (e.g., being an interval graph, a unit-disc graph etc.) can be tested with a polynomial query complexity. This confirms a conjecture of Alon. The proofs combine probabilistic ideas together with a novel application of a conditional regularity lemma for matrices, due to Alon, Fischer and Newman.

Constructing near spanning trees with few local inspections

Abstract: Constructing a spanning tree of a graph is one of the most basic tasks in graph theory. Motivated by several recent studies of local graph algorithms, we consider the following variant of this problem. Let G be a connected bounded-degree graph. Given an edge e in G we would like to decide whether e belongs to a connected subgraph consisting of edges (for a prespecified constant ), where the decision for different edges should be consistent with the same subgraph . Can this task be performed by inspecting only a constant number of edges in G? Our main results are: We show that if every t-vertex subgraph of G has expansion then one can (deterministically) construct a sparse spanning subgraph of G using few inspections. To this end we analyze a “local” version of a famous minimum-weight spanning tree algorithm. We show that the above expansion requirement is sharp even when allowing randomization. To this end we construct a family of 3-regular graphs of high girth, in which every t-vertex subgraph has expansion . We prove that for this family of graphs, any local algorithm for the sparse spanning graph problem requires inspecting a number of edges which is proportional to the girth. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg., 2016

A Generalized Tur\'an Problem and its Applications

Abstract: The investigation of conditions guaranteeing the appearance of cycles of certain lengths is one of the most well-studied topics in graph theory. In this paper we consider a problem of this type which asks, for fixed integers ${\ell}$ and $k$, how many copies of the $k$-cycle guarantee the appearance of an $\ell$-cycle? Extending previous results of Bollobas--Győri--Li and Alon--Shikhelman, we fully resolve this problem by giving tight (or nearly tight) bounds for all values of $\ell$ and $k$. We also present a somewhat surprising application of the above mentioned estimates to the study of the graph removal lemma. Prior to this work, all bounds for removal lemmas were either polynomial or there was a tower-type gap between the best known upper and lower bounds. We fill this gap by showing that for every super-polynomial function $f(\varepsilon)$, there is a family of graphs ${\cal F}$, such that the bounds for the ${\cal F}$ removal lemma are precisely given by $f(\varepsilon)$. We thus obtain the first examples of removal lemmas with tight super-polynomial bounds. A special case of this result resolves a problem of Alon and the second author, while another special case partially resolves a problem of Goldreich.

A sparse regular approximation lemma

Abstract: We introduce a new variant of Szemeredi's regularity lemma which we call the "sparse regular approximation lemma" (SRAL). The input to this lemma is a graph $G$ of edge density $p$ and parameters $\epsilon, \delta$, where we think of $\delta$ as a constant. The goal is to construct an $\epsilon$-regular partition of $G$ while having the freedom to add/remove up to $\delta |E(G)|$ edges. As we show here, this weaker variant of the regularity lemma already suffices for proving the graph removal lemma and the hypergraph regularity lemma, which are two of the main applications of the (standard) regularity lemma. This of course raises the following question: can one obtain quantitative bounds for SRAL that are significantly better than those associated with the regularity lemma? Our first result answers the above question affirmatively by proving an upper bound for SRAL given by a tower of height $O(\log 1/p)$. This allows us to reprove Fox's upper bound for the graph removal lemma. Our second result is a matching lower bound for SRAL showing that a tower of height $\Omega(\log 1/p)$ is unavoidable. We in fact prove a more general multicolored lower bound which is essential for proving lower bounds for the hypergraph regularity lemma.

The Removal Lemma for Tournaments

Abstract: Suppose one needs to change the direction of at least $\epsilon n^2$ edges of an $n$-vertex tournament $T$, in order to make it $H$-free. A standard application of the regularity method shows that in this case $T$ contains at least $f^*_H(\epsilon)n^h$ copies of $H$, where $f^*_H$ is some tower-type function. It has long been observed that many graph/digraph problems become easier when assuming that the host graph is a tournament. It is thus natural to ask if the removal lemma becomes easier if we assume that the digraph $G$ is a tournament. Our main result here is a precise characterization of the tournaments $H$ for which $f^*_H(\epsilon)$ is polynomial in $\epsilon$, stating that such a bound is attainable if and only if $H$'s vertex set can be partitioned into two sets, each spanning an acyclic directed graph. The proof of this characterization relies, among other things, on a novel application of a regularity lemma for matrices due to Alon, Fischer and Newman, and on probabilistic variants of Ruzsa-Szemeredi graphs. We finally show that even when restricted to tournaments, deciding if $H$ satisfies the condition of our characterization is an NP-hard problem.

Efficient Removal without Efficient Regularity

Abstract: Obtaining an efficient bound for the triangle removal lemma is one of the most outstanding open problems of extremal combinatorics Perhaps the main bottleneck for achieving this goal is that triangle-free graphs can be highly unstructured For example, triangle-free graphs might have only regular partitions (in the sense of Szemer\'edi) of tower-type size And indeed, essentially all the graph properties ${\cal P}$ for which removal lemmas with reasonable bounds were obtained, are such that every graph satisfying ${\cal P}$ has a small regular partition So in some sense, a barrier for obtaining an efficient removal lemma for property ${\cal P}$ was having an efficient regularity lemma for graphs satisfying ${\cal P}$ In this paper we consider the property of being induced $C_4$-free, which also suffers from the fact that a graph might satisfy this property but still have only regular partitions of tower-type size By developing a new approach for this problem we manage to overcome this barrier and thus obtain a merely exponential bound for the induced $C_4$ removal lemma We thus obtain the first efficient removal lemma that does not rely on an efficient version of the regularity lemma This is the first substantial progress on a problem raised by Alon in 2001, and more recently by Alon, Conlon and Fox

A Generalized Turán Problem and its Applications

Abstract: Our first theorem in this paper is a hierarchy theorem for the query complexity of testing graph properties with 1-sided error; more precisely, we show that for every sufficiently fast-growing function f, there is a graph property whose 1-sided-error query complexity is precisely f(Θ(1/e)). No result of this type was previously known for any f which is super-polynomial. Goldreich [ECCC 2005] asked to exhibit a graph property whose query complexity is 2Θ(1/e). Our hierarchy theorem partially resolves this problem by exhibiting a property whose 1-sided-error query complexity is 2Θ(1/e). We also use our hierarchy theorem in order to resolve a problem raised by the second author and Alon [STOC 2005] regarding testing relaxed versions of bipartiteness. Our second theorem states that for any function f there is a graph property whose 1-sided-error query complexity is f(Θ(1/e)) while its 2-sided-error query complexity is only poly(1/e). This is the first indication of the surprising power that 2-sided-error testing algorithms have over 1-sided-error ones, even when restricted to properties that are testable with 1-sided error. Again, no result of this type was previously known for any f that is super polynomial. The above theorems are derived from a graph theoretic result which we think is of independent interest, and might have further applications. Alon and Shikhelman [JCTB 2016] introduced the following generalized Turan problem: for fixed graphs H and T, and an integer n, what is the maximum number of copies of T, denoted by ex(n,T,H), that can appear in an n-vertex H-free graph? This problem received a lot of attention recently, with an emphasis on ex(n,C3,C2l +1). Our third theorem in this paper gives tight bounds for ex(n,Ck,Cl) for all the remaining values of k and l.

A tournament approach to pattern avoiding matrices

Abstract: We consider the following Turan-type problem: given a fixed tournament H, what is the least integer t = t(n,H) so that adding t edges to any n-vertex tournament, results in a digraph containing a copy of H. Similarly, what is the least integer t = t(Tn,H) so that adding t edges to the n-vertex transitive tournament, results in a digraph containing a copy of H. Besides proving several results on these problems, our main contributions are the following: Pach and Tardos conjectured that if M is an acyclic 0/1 matrix, then any n × n matrix with n(log n)O(1) entries equal to 1 contains the pattern M. We show that this conjecture is equivalent to the assertion that t(Tn,H) = n(log n)O(1) if and only if H belongs to a certain (natural) family of tournaments. We propose an approach for determining if t(n,H) = n(log n)O(1). This approach combines expansion in sparse graphs, together with certain structural characterizations of H-free tournaments. Our result opens the door for using structural graph theoretic tools in order to settle the Pach–Tardos conjecture.