This Special Issue of CPC is devoted to papers from the conference honouring the 65th birthday of Tom Trotter, held at the Georgia Institute of Technology, May 5–9 2008. The organizing committee consisted of Graham Brightwell, Dwight Duffus, Stefan Felsner, Hal Kierstead, Prasad Tetali, Robin Thomas, Peter Winkler and Xingxing Yu.

Let m > 2 be an integer, let C2m denote the cycle of length 2m on the set of vertices [−m, m) = {−m, −m + 1, . . ., m − 2, m − 1}, and let G = G(m, d) denote the graph on the set of vertices [−m, m)d, in which two vertices are adjacent if and only if they are adjacent in C2m in one coordinate, and equal in all others. This graph can be viewed as the graph of the d-dimensional torus. We prove that one can delete a fraction of at most of the vertices of G so that no topologically non-trivial cycles remain. This is tight up to the logd factor and improves earlier estimates by various researchers.

Let 3 ≤ k < n/2. We prove the analogue of the Erdős–Ko–Rado theorem for the random k-uniform hypergraph Gk(n, p) when k < (n/2)1/3; that is, we show that with probability tending to 1 as n → ∞, the maximum size of an intersecting subfamily of Gk(n, p) is the size of a maximum trivial family. The analogue of the Erdős–Ko–Rado theorem does not hold for all p when k ≫ n1/3.

We give quite precise results for k < n1/2−ϵ. For larger k we show that the random Erdős–Ko–Rado theorem holds as long as p is not too small, and fails to hold for a wide range of smaller values of p. Along the way, we prove that every non-trivial intersecting k-uniform hypergraph can be covered by k2 − k + 1 pairs, which is sharp as evidenced by projective planes. This improves upon a result of Sanders [7]. Several open questions remain.

In this work we determine the expected number of vertices of degree k = k(n) in a graph with n vertices that is drawn uniformly at random from a subcritical graph class. Examples of such classes are outerplanar, series-parallel, cactus and clique graphs. Moreover, we provide exponentially small bounds for the probability that the quantities in question deviate from their expected values.

A sequence X = {xi}ni=1 over an alphabet containing t symbols is t-universal if every permutation of those symbols is contained as a subsequence. Kleitman and Kwiatkowski showed that the minimum length of a t-universal sequence is (1 − o(1))t2. In this note we address a related Ramsey-type problem. We say that an r-colouring χ of the sequence X is canonical if χ(xi) = χ(xj) whenever xi = xj. We prove that for any fixedt the length of the shortest sequence over an alphabet of size t, which has the property that every r-colouring of its entries contains a t-universal and canonically coloured subsequence, is at most . This is best possible up to a multiplicative constant c independent of r.

We give a very general sufficient condition for a one-parameter family of curves not to have n members with ‘too many’ (i.e., a near-quadratic number of) triple points of intersections. As a special case, a combinatorial distinction between straight lines and unit circles will be shown. (Actually, this is more than just a simple application; originally this motivated our results.)

We provide a characterization of upper locally distributive lattices (ULD-lattices) in terms of edge colourings of their cover graphs. In many instances where a set of combinatorial objects carries the order structure of a lattice, this characterization yields a slick proof of distributivity or UL-distributivity. This is exemplified by proving a distributive lattice structure on Δ-bonds with invariant circular flow-difference. This instance generalizes several previously studied lattice structures, in particular, c-orientations (Propp), α-orientations of planar graphs (Felsner, resp. de Mendez) and planar flows (Khuller, Naor and Klein). The characterization also applies to other instances, e.g., to chip-firing games.

It is shown that the size of a subgraph of Qn without a cycle of length 14 is of order o(|E(Qn)|).

Let ⊂ 2[n] be a family of subsets of {1, 2,. . ., n}. For any poset H, we say is H-free if does not contain any subposet isomorphic to H. Katona and others have investigated the behaviour of La(n, H), which denotes the maximum size of H-free families ⊂ 2[n]. Here we use a new approach, which is to apply methods from extremal graph theory and probability theory to identify new classes of posets H, for which La(n, H) can be determined asymptotically as n → ∞ for various posets H, including two-end-forks, up-down trees, and cycles C4k on two levels.

We give an alternative proof of a conjecture of Bollobás, Brightwell and Leader, first proved by Peter Allen, stating that the number of Boolean functions definable by 2-SAT formulae is . One step in the proof determines the asymptotics of the number of ‘odd-blue-triangle-free’ graphs on n vertices.

The game colouring number gcol(G) of a graph G is the least k such that, if two players take turns choosing the vertices of a graph, then either of them can ensure that every vertex has fewer than k neighbours chosen before it, regardless of what choices the other player makes. Clearly gcol(G) ≤ Δ(G)+1. Sauer and Spencer [20] proved that if two graphs G1 and G2 on n vertices satisfy 2Δ(G1)Δ(G2) < n then they pack, i.e., there is an embedding of G1 into the complement of G2. We improve this by showing that if (gcol(G1)−1)Δ(G2)+(gcol(G2)−1)Δ(G1) < n then G1 and G2 pack. To our knowledge this is the first application of colouring games to a non-game problem.

In this work we suggest a new model for generating random satisfiable k-CNF formulas. To generate such formulas. randomly permute all possible clauses over the variables x1,. . .,xn, and starting from the empty formula, go over the clauses one by one, including each new clause as you go along if, after its addition, the formula remains satisfiable. We study the evolution of this process, namely the distribution over formulas obtained after scanning through the first m clauses (in the random permutation's order).

Random processes with conditioning on a certain property being respected are widely studied in the context of graph properties. This study was pioneered by Ruciński and Wormald in 1992 for graphs with a fixed degree sequence, and also by Erdős, Suen and Winkler in 1995 for triangle-free and bipartite graphs. Since then many other graph properties have been studied, such as planarity and H-freeness. Thus our model is a natural extension of this approach to the satisfiability setting.

Our main contribution is as follows. For m ≥ cn, c = c(k) a sufficiently large constant, we are able to characterize the structure of the solution space of a typical formula in this distribution. Specifically, we show that typically all satisfying assignments are essentially clustered in one cluster, and all but e−Ω(m/n)n of the variables take the same value in all satisfying assignments. We also describe a polynomial-time algorithm that finds w.h.p. a satisfying assignment for such formulas.

For k-uniform hypergraphs F and H and an integer r, let cr,F(H) denote the number of r-colourings of the set of hyperedges of H with no monochromatic copy of F, and let , where the maximum runs over all k-uniform hypergraphs on n vertices. Moreover, let ex(n,F) be the usual extremal or Turán function, i.e., the maximum number of hyperedges of an n-vertex k-uniform hypergraph which contains no copy of F.

For complete graphs F = Kℓ and r = 2, Erdős and Rothschild conjectured that c2,Kℓ(n) = 2ex(n,Kℓ). This conjecture was proved by Yuster for ℓ = 3 and by Alon, Balogh, Keevash and Sudakov for arbitrary ℓ. In this paper, we consider the question for hypergraphs and show that, in the special case when F is the Fano plane and r = 2 or 3, then cr,F(n) = rex(n,F), while cr,F(n) ≫ rex(n,F) for r ≥ 4.

A colouring of the vertices of a hypergraph H is called conflict-free if each hyperedge E of H contains a vertex of ‘unique’ colour that does not get repeated in E. The smallest number of colours required for such a colouring is called the conflict-free chromatic number of H, and is denoted by χCF(H). This parameter was first introduced by Even, Lotker, Ron and Smorodinsky (FOCS 2002) in a geometric setting, in connection with frequency assignment problems for cellular networks. Here we analyse this notion for general hypergraphs. It is shown that , for every hypergraph with m edges, and that this bound is tight. Better bounds of the order of m1/t log m are proved under the assumption that the size of every edge of H is at least 2t − 1, for some t ≥ 3. Using Lovász's Local Lemma, the same result holds for hypergraphs in which the size of every edge is at least 2t − 1 and every edge intersects at most m others. We give efficient polynomial-time algorithms to obtain such colourings.

Our machinery can also be applied to the hypergraphs induced by the neighbourhoods of the vertices of a graph. It turns out that in this case we need far fewer colours. For example, it is shown that the vertices of any graph G with maximum degree Δ can be coloured with log2+ε Δ colours, so that the neighbourhood of every vertex contains a point of ‘unique’ colour. We give an efficient deterministic algorithm to find such a colouring, based on a randomized algorithmic version of the Lovász Local Lemma, suggested by Beck, Molloy and Reed. To achieve this, we need to (1) correct a small error in the Molloy–Reed approach, (2) restate and re-prove their result in a deterministic form.

The sub-Gaussian constant of a graph arises naturally in bounding the moment-generating function of Lipschitz functions on the graph, with a given probability measure on the set of vertices. The closely related spread constant of a graph measures the maximal variance over all Lipschitz functions on the graph. As such they are both useful (as demonstrated in the works of Bobkov, Houdré and Tetali and Alon, Boppana and Spencer) for describing the concentration of measure phenomenon in product graphs. An equivalent formulation of the sub-Gaussian constant using a transportation inequality, introduced by Bobkov and Götze, is investigated here in depth, leading to a new way of bounding the sub-Gaussian constant. A tight concentration result for the discrete torus is given as a concrete application. An infinite family of graphs is also provided here to demonstrate that, typically, the spread and the sub-Gaussian constants differ by an order of magnitude.