It follows from known results that every regular tripartite hypergraph of positive degree, with n vertices in each class, has matching number at least n/2. This bound is best possible, and the extremal configuration is unique. Here we prove a stability version of this statement, establishing that every regular tripartite hypergraph with matching number at most (1 + ϵ)n/2 is close in structure to the extremal configuration, where ‘closeness’ is measured by an explicit function of ϵ.

Two graphs G1 and G2 on n vertices are said to pack if there exist injective mappings of their vertex sets into [n] such that the images of their edge sets are disjoint. A longstanding conjecture due to Bollobás and Eldridge and, independently, Catlin, asserts that if (Δ(G1) + 1)(Δ(G2) + 1) ⩽ n + 1, then G1 and G2 pack. We consider the validity of this assertion under the additional assumption that G1 or G2 has bounded codegree. In particular, we prove for all t ⩾ 2 that if G1 contains no copy of the complete bipartite graph K2,t and Δ(G1) > 17t · Δ(G2), then (Δ(G1) + 1)(Δ(G2) + 1) ⩽ n + 1 implies that G1 and G2 pack. We also provide a mild improvement if moreover G2 contains no copy of the complete tripartite graph K1,1,s, s ⩾ 1.

It is known that w.h.p. the hitting time τ2σ for the random graph process to have minimum degree 2σ coincides with the hitting time for σ edge-disjoint Hamilton cycles [4, 9, 13]. In this paper we prove an online version of this property. We show that, for a fixed integer σ ⩾ 2, if random edges of Kn are presented one by one then w.h.p. it is possible to colour the edges online with σ colours so that at time τ2σ each colour class is Hamiltonian.

We construct minor-closed addable families of graphs that are subcritical and contain all planar graphs. This contradicts (one direction of) a well-known conjecture of Noy.

The Tutte polynomial of a graph is a two-variable polynomial whose zeros and evaluations encode many interesting properties of the graph. In this article we investigate the real zeros of the Tutte polynomials of graphs, and show that they form a dense subset of certain regions of the plane. This is the first density result for the real zeros of the Tutte polynomial in a region of positive volume. Our result almost confirms a conjecture of Jackson and Sokal except for one region which is related to an open problem on flow polynomials.

Let k ⩾ 3 be an integer, hk(G) be the number of vertices of degree at least 2k in a graph G, and ℓk(G) be the number of vertices of degree at most 2k − 2 in G. Dirac and Erdős proved in 1963 that if hk(G) − ℓk(G) ⩾ k2 + 2k − 4, then G contains k vertex-disjoint cycles. For each k ⩾ 2, they also showed an infinite sequence of graphs Gk(n) with hk(Gk(n)) − ℓk(Gk(n)) = 2k − 1 such that Gk(n) does not have k disjoint cycles. Recently, the authors proved that, for k ⩾ 2, a bound of 3k is sufficient to guarantee the existence of k disjoint cycles, and presented for every k a graph G0(k) with hk(G0(k)) − ℓk(G0(k)) = 3k − 1 and no k disjoint cycles. The goal of this paper is to refine and sharpen this result. We show that the Dirac–Erdős construction is optimal in the sense that for every k ⩾ 2, there are only finitely many graphs G with hk(G) − ℓk(G) ⩾ 2k but no k disjoint cycles. In particular, every graph G with |V(G)| ⩾ 19k and hk(G) − ℓk(G) ⩾ 2k contains k disjoint cycles.

Consider a graph on randomly scattered points in an arbitrary space, with any two points x, y connected with probability ϕ(x, y). Suppose the number of points is large but the mean number of isolated points is O(1). We give general criteria for the latter to be approximately Poisson distributed. More generally, we consider the number of vertices of fixed degree, the number of components of fixed order, and the number of edges. We use a general result on Poisson approximation by Stein's method for a set of points selected from a Poisson point process. This method also gives a good Poisson approximation for U-statistics of a Poisson process.

Let G be a finite group, and write cd (G) for the set of degrees of irreducible characters of G. The common-divisor graph Γ(G) associated with G is the graph whose vertex set is cd (G)∖{1} and there is an edge between distinct vertices a and b, if (a, b) > 1. In this paper we prove that if Γ(G) is a k-regular graph for some k ⩾ 0, then for the solvable groups, either Γ(G) is a complete graph of order k + 1 or Γ(G) has two connected components which are complete of the same order and for the non-solvable groups, either k = 0 and cd(G) = cd(PSL2(2f)), where f ⩾ 2 or Γ(G) is a 4-regular graph with six vertices and cd(G) = cd(Alt7) or cd(Sym7).

For two given graphs $G_{1}$ and $G_{2}$, the planar Ramsey number $PR(G_{1},G_{2})$ is the smallest integer $N$ such that every planar graph $G$ on $N$ vertices either contains $G_{1}$, or its complement contains $G_{2}$. Let $C_{4}$ be a quadrilateral, $T_{n}$ a tree of order $n\geq 3$ with maximum degree $k$, and $K_{1,k}$ a star of order $k+1$. We show that $PR(C_{4},T_{n})=\max \{n+1,PR(C_{4},K_{1,k})\}$. Combining this with a result of Chen et al. [‘All quadrilateral-wheel planar Ramsey numbers’, Graphs Combin.33 (2017), 335–346] yields exact values of all the quadrilateral-tree planar Ramsey numbers.

For an edge $uv$ in a graph $G$, $W_{u,v}^{G}$ denotes the set of all vertices of $G$ that are closer to $u$ than to $v$. A graph $G$ is said to be quasi-distance-balanced if there exists a constant $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}>1$ such that $|W_{u,v}^{G}|=\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}^{\pm 1}|W_{v,u}^{G}|$ for every pair of adjacent vertices $u$ and $v$. The existence of nonbipartite quasi-distance-balanced graphs is an open problem. In this paper we investigate the possible structure of cycles in quasi-distance-balanced graphs and generalise the previously known result that every quasi-distance-balanced graph is triangle-free. We also prove that a connected quasi-distance-balanced graph admitting a bridge is isomorphic to a star. Several open problems are posed.

Given a pair of graphs G and H, the Ramsey number R(G, H) is the smallest N such that every red–blue colouring of the edges of the complete graph KN contains a red copy of G or a blue copy of H. If a graph G is connected, it is well known and easy to show that R(G, H) ≥ (|G|−1)(χ(H)−1)+σ(H), where χ(H) is the chromatic number of H and σ(H) is the size of the smallest colour class in a χ(H)-colouring of H. A graph G is called H-good if R(G, H) = (|G|−1)(χ(H)−1)+σ(H). The notion of Ramsey goodness was introduced by Burr and Erdős in 1983 and has been extensively studied since then.

In this paper we show that if n≥ Ω(|H| log4 |H|) then every n-vertex bounded degree tree T is H-good. The dependency between n and |H| is tight up to log factors. This substantially improves a result of Erdős, Faudree, Rousseau, and Schelp from 1985, who proved that n-vertex bounded degree trees are H-good when n ≥ Ω(|H|4).

We prove a general large-sieve statement in the context of random walks on subgraphs of a given graph. This can be seen as a generalization of previously known results where one performs a random walk on a group enjoying a strong spectral gap property. In such a context the point is to exhibit a strong uniform expansion property for a suitable family of Cayley graphs on quotients. In our combinatorial approach, this is replaced by a result of Alon–Roichman about expanding properties of random Cayley graphs. Applying the general setting we show, for instance, that with high probability (in a strong explicit sense) random coloured subsets of integers contain monochromatic (nonempty) subsets summing to  $0$ , and that a random colouring of the edges of a complete graph contains a monochromatic triangle.

In 2006 Brown asked the following question in the spirit of Ramsey theory: given a non-periodic infinite word $x=x_{1}x_{2}x_{3}\ldots$ with values in a set $\mathbb{A}$, does there exist a finite colouring $\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}:\mathbb{A}^{+}\rightarrow C$ relative to which $x$ does not admit a $\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}$-monochromatic factorization, i.e. a factorization of the form $x=u_{1}u_{2}u_{3}\ldots$ with $\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}(u_{i})=\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}(u_{\!j})$ for all $i,j\geqslant 1$? Various partial results in support of an affirmative answer to this question have appeared in the literature in recent years. In particular it is known that the question admits an affirmative answer for all non-uniformly recurrent words and for various classes of uniformly recurrent words including Sturmian words and fixed points of strongly recognizable primitive substitutions. In this paper we give a complete and optimal affirmative answer to this question by showing that if $x=x_{1}x_{2}x_{3}\ldots$ is an infinite non-periodic word with values in a set $\mathbb{A}$, then there exists a $2$-colouring $\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}:\mathbb{A}^{+}\rightarrow \{0,1\}$ such that for any factorization $x=u_{1}u_{2}u_{3}\ldots$ we have $\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}(u_{i})\neq \unicode[STIX]{x1D711}(u_{\!j})$ for some $i\neq j$.

The purpose of this article is to generalize some known characterizations of Banach space properties in terms of graph preclusion. In particular, it is shown that superreflexivity can be characterized by the non-equi-bi-Lipschitz embeddability of any family of bundle graphs generated by a non-trivial finitely branching bundle graph. It is likewise shown that asymptotic uniform convexifiability can be characterized within the class of reflexive Banach spaces with an unconditional asymptotic structure by the non-equi-bi-Lipschitz embeddability of any family of bundle graphs generated by a non-trivial $\aleph _{0}$-branching bundle graph. For the specific case of $L_{1}$, it is shown that every countably branching bundle graph bi-Lipschitzly embeds into $L_{1}$ with distortion no worse than $2$.

An oriented k-uniform hypergraph (a family of ordered k-sets) has the ordering property (or Property O) if, for every linear order of the vertex set, there is some edge oriented consistently with the linear order. We find bounds on the minimum number of edges in a hypergraph with Property O.

Let X := X n ∪ {(0, 0), (1, 0)}, where X n is a planar Poisson point process of intensity n. We provide a first nontrivial lower bound for the distance between the expected length of the shortest path between (0, 0) and (1, 0) in the Delaunay triangulation associated with X when the intensity of X n goes to ∞. Simulations indicate that the correct value is about 1.04. We also prove that the expected length of the so-called upper path converges to 35 / 3π2, yielding an upper bound for the expected length of the smallest path.

We consider a family of directed exponential random graph models parametrized by edges and outward stars. Much of the important statistical content of such models is given by the normalization constant of the models, and, in particular, an appropriately scaled limit of the normalization, which is called the free energy. We derive precise asymptotics for the normalization constant for finite graphs. We use this to derive a formula for the free energy. The limit is analytic everywhere except along a curve corresponding to a first-order phase transition. We examine unusual behavior of the model along the phase transition curve.

The largest components of the critical Erdős–Rényi graph, G(n, p) with p = 1 / n, have size of order n2/3 with high probability. We give detailed asymptotics for the probability that there is an unusually large component, i.e. of size an2/3 for large a. Our results, which extend the work of Pittel (2001), allow a to depend upon n and also hold for a range of values of p around 1 / n. We also provide asymptotics for the distribution of the size of the component containing a particular vertex.

The jigsaw percolation process on graphs was introduced by Brummitt et al. (2015) as a model of collaborative solutions of puzzles in social networks. Percolation in this process may be viewed as the joint connectedness of two graphs on a common vertex set. Our aim is to extend a result of Bollobás et al. (2017) concerning this process to hypergraphs for a variety of possible definitions of connectedness. In particular, we determine the asymptotic order of the critical threshold probability for percolation when both hypergraphs are chosen binomially at random.