Let [n] r be the complete r-partite hypergraph with vertex classes of size n. It is an easy exercise to show that every set of more than (k−1)n r−1 edges in [n] r contains a matching of size k. We conjecture the following rainbow version of this observation: if F 1,F 2,. . .,F k ⊆ [n] r are of size larger than (k−1)n r−1 then there exists a rainbow matching, that is, a choice of disjoint edges f i ∈ F i . We prove this conjecture for r=2 and r=3.

Let k ⩾ 3 be a fixed integer and let Zk (G) be the number of k-colourings of the graph G. For certain values of the average degree, the random variable Zk (G(n, m)) is known to be concentrated in the sense that $\tfrac{1}{n}(\ln Z_k(G(n,m))-\ln\Erw[Z_k(G(n,m))])$ converges to 0 in probability (Achlioptas and Coja-Oghlan, Proc. FOCS 2008). In the present paper we prove a significantly stronger concentration result. Namely, we show that for a wide range of average degrees, $\tfrac{1}{\omega}(\ln Z_k(G(n,m))-\ln\Erw[Z_k(G(n,m))])$ converges to 0 in probability for any diverging function $\omega=\omega(n)\ra\infty$ . For k exceeding a certain constant k 0 this result covers all average degrees up to the so-called condensation phase transition d k,con , and this is best possible. As an application, we show that the experiment of choosing a k-colouring of the random graph G(n,m) uniformly at random is contiguous with respect to the so-called ‘planted model’.

Given a family of r-uniform hypergraphs ${\cal F}$ (or r-graphs for brevity), the Turán number ex(n, ${\cal F})$ of ${\cal F}$ is the maximum number of edges in an r-graph on n vertices that does not contain any member of ${\cal F}$ . A pair {u,v} is covered in a hypergraph G if some edge of G contains {u, v}. Given an r-graph F and a positive integer p ⩾ n(F), where n(F) denotes the number of vertices in F, let HF p denote the r-graph obtained as follows. Label the vertices of F as v 1,. . .,vn (F). Add new vertices vn(F)+1 ,. . .,vp . For each pair of vertices vi, vj not covered in F, add a set Bi,j of r − 2 new vertices and the edge {vi, vj } ∪ Bi,j , where the Bi,j are pairwise disjoint over all such pairs {i, j}. We call HF p the expanded p-clique with an embedded F. For a relatively large family of F, we show that for all sufficiently large n, ex(n,HF p ) = |Tr (n, p − 1)|, where Tr (n, p − 1) is the balanced complete (p − 1)-partite r-graph on n vertices. We also establish structural stability of near-extremal graphs. Our results generalize or strengthen several earlier results and provide a class of hypergraphs for which the Turán number is exactly determined (for large n).

We investigate the asymptotic version of the Erdős–Ko–Rado theorem for the random k-uniform hypergraph $\mathcal{H}$ k (n, p). For 2⩽k(n) ⩽ n/2, let $N=\binom{n}k$ and $D=\binom{n-k}k$ . We show that with probability tending to 1 as n → ∞, the largest intersecting subhypergraph of $\mathcal{H}$ has size

$$(1+o(1))p\ffrac kn N$$

$$p\gg \ffrac nk\ln^2\biggl(\ffrac nk\biggr)D^{-1}.$$

A different behaviour occurs when k = o(n). In this case, the lower bound on p is almost optimal. Further, for the small interval D −1 ≪ p ⩽ (n/k)1−ϵ D −1, the largest intersecting subhypergraph of $\mathcal{H}$ k (n, p) has size Θ(ln(pD)ND −1), provided that $k \gg \sqrt{n \ln n}$ .

Together with previous work of Balogh, Bohman and Mubayi, these results settle the asymptotic size of the largest intersecting family in $\mathcal{H}$ k , for essentially all values of p and k.

Given a graph F, let st (F) be the number of subdivisions of F, each with a different vertex set, which one can guarantee in a graph G in which every edge lies in at least t copies of F. In 1990, Tuza asked for which graphs F and large t, one has that st (F) is exponential in a power of t. We show that, somewhat surprisingly, the only such F are complete graphs, and for every F which is not complete, st (F) is polynomial in t. Further, for a natural strengthening of the local condition above, we also characterize those F for which st (F) is exponential in a power of t.

We investigate the number of 4-edge paths in graphs with a given number of vertices and edges, proving an asymptotically sharp upper bound on this number. The extremal construction is the quasi-star or the quasi-clique graph, depending on the edge density. An easy lower bound is also proved. This answer resembles the classic theorem of Ahlswede and Katona about the maximal number of 2-edge paths, and a recent theorem of Kenyon, Radin, Ren and Sadun about k-edge stars.

Let ℱ be a family of graphs and let d be large enough. For every d-regular graph G, we study the existence of a spanning ℱ-free subgraph of G with large minimum degree. This problem is well understood if ℱ does not contain bipartite graphs. Here we provide asymptotically tight results for many families of bipartite graphs such as cycles or complete bipartite graphs. To prove these results, we study a locally injective analogue of the question.

We prove an inequality for functions on the discrete cube {0, 1} n extending the edge-isoperimetric inequality for sets. This inequality turns out to be equivalent to the following claim about random walks on the cube: subcubes maximize ‘mean first exit time’ among all subsets of the cube of the same cardinality.