A note on the distribution of weights of fixed-rank matrices over the binary field

Let M be a random $m\times n$ rank-r matrix over the binary field ${\mathbb{F}}_2$, and let $\mathrm{wt}(\mathbf{M})$ be its Hamming weight, that is, the number of nonzero entries of M.We prove that, as $m,n\to +\infty$ with r fixed and $m/n$ tending to a constant, we have that$\frac{\mathrm{wt}(\mathbf{M})-\frac{1-2^{-r}}{2}mn}{\sqrt{\frac{2^{-r}(1-2^{-r})}{4}(m+n)mn}}$ converges in distribution to a standard normal random variable.     

Note on rainbow cycles in edge-colored graphs

Let G be a graph of order n with an edge-coloring c, and let ${\delta }^c(G)$ denote the minimum color-degree of G. A subgraph F of G is called rainbow if all edges of F have pairwise distinct colors. There have been a lot of results on rainbow cycles of edge-colored graphs. In this paper, we show that (i) if ${\delta }^c(G)>\frac{2n?1}{3}$, then every vertex of G is contained in a rainbow triangle; (ii) if ${\delta }^c(G)>\frac{2n?1}{3}$ and $n\ge 13$, then every vertex of G is contained in a rainbow $C_4$; (iii) if G is complete, $n\ge 7k?17$ and ${\delta }^c(G)>\frac{n?1}{2}+k$, then G contains a rainbow cycle of length at least k, where $k\ge 5$.     

A characterization of graphs with given maximum degree and smallest possible matching number: II

Let ${\alpha }^{\prime }(G)$ be the matching number of a graph G. A characterization of the graphs with given maximum odd degree and smallest possible matching number is given by Henning and Shozi (2021) [13]. In this paper we complete our study by giving a characterization of the graphs with given maximum even degree and smallest possible matching number. In 2018 Henning and Yeo [10] proved that if G is a connected graph of order n, size m and maximum degree k where $k\ge 4$ is even, then ${\alpha }^{\prime }(G)\ge \frac{n}{k(k+1)}+\frac{m}{k+1}?\frac{1}{k(k+1)}$, unless G is k-regular and $n\in \{k+1,k+3\}$. In this paper, we give a complete characterization of the graphs that achieve equality in this bound when the maximum degree k is even, thereby completing our study of graphs with given maximum degree and smallest possible matching number.     

Path decompositions of triangle-free graphs

Let G be a graph with n vertices. A path decomposition of G is a set of edge-disjoint paths containing all the edges of G. Let $p(G)$ denote the minimum number of paths needed in a path decomposition of G. Gallai Conjecture asserts that if G is connected, then $p(G)\le ?n/2?$. If G is allowed to be disconnected, then the upper bound $?\frac{3}{4}n?$ for $p(G)$ was obtained by Donald [7], which was improved to $?\frac{2}{3}n?$ independently by Dean and Kouider [6] and Yan [14]. For graphs consisting of vertex-disjoint triangles, $?\frac{2}{3}n?$ is reached and so this bound is tight. If triangles are forbidden in G, then $p(G)\le ?\frac{g+1}{2g}n?$ can be derived from the result of Harding and McGuinness [11], where g denotes the girth of G. In this paper, we also focus on triangle-free graphs and prove that $p(G)\le ?3n/5?$, which improves the above result with $g=4$.     

Erdős matching conjecture for almost perfect matchings

In 1965 Erd?s asked, what is the largest size of a family of k-element subsets of an n-element set that does not contain a matching of size $s+1$? In this note, we improve upon a recent result of Frankl and resolve this problem for $s>101k^3$ and $(s+1)k?n<(s+1)(k+\frac{1}{100k})$.     

An infinite family of m-ovoids of Q(4,q)

In this paper, we construct an infinite family of $\frac{q-1}{2}$-ovoids of the generalized quadrangle $Q(4,q)$, for $q\equiv 1(\text{mod}4)$ and $q>5$. Together with [3] and [11], this establishes the existence of $\frac{q-1}{2}$-ovoids in $Q(4,q)$ for each odd prime power q.     

On the size of special class 1 graphs and (P3;k)-co-critical graphs

A well-known theorem of Vizing states that if G is a simple graph with maximum degree Δ, then the chromatic index ${\chi }^{\prime }(G)$ of G is Δ or $\mathrm{\Delta }+1$. A graph G is class 1 if ${\chi }^{\prime }(G)=\mathrm{\Delta }$, and class 2 if ${\chi }^{\prime }(G)=\mathrm{\Delta }+1$; G is Δ-critical if it is connected, class 2 and ${\chi }^{\prime }(G-e)<{\chi }^{\prime }(G)$ for every $e\in E(G)$. A long-standing conjecture of Vizing from 1968 states that every Δ-critical graph on n vertices has at least $(n(\mathrm{\Delta }-1)+3)/2$ edges. We initiate the study of determining the minimum number of edges of class 1 graphs G, in addition, ${\chi }^{\prime }(G+e)={\chi }^{\prime }(G)+1$ for every $e\in E(\bar{G})$. Such graphs have intimate relation to $(P_3;k)$-co-critical graphs, where a non-complete graph G is $(P_3;k)$-co-critical if there exists a k-coloring of $E(G)$ such that G does not contain a monochromatic copy of $P_3$ but every k-coloring of $E(G+e)$ contains a monochromatic copy of $P_3$ for every $e\in E(\bar{G})$. We use the bound on the size of the aforementioned class 1 graphs to study the minimum number of edges over all $(P_3;k)$-co-critical graphs. We prove that if G is a $(P_3;k)$-co-critical graph on $n\ge k+2$ vertices, then$e(G)\ge \frac{k}{2}(n-\lceil \frac{k}{2}\rceil -\epsilon )+\left(\begin{array}{c}\lceil k/2\rceil +\epsilon \\ 2\end{array}\right),$ where ε is the remainder of $n-\lceil k/2\rceil$ when divided by 2. This bound is best possible for all $k\ge 1$ and $n\ge \lceil 3k/2\rceil +2$.     

Some new results on dimension and Bose distance for various classes of BCH codes

In this paper, we give the dimension and the minimum distance of two subclasses of narrow-sense primitive BCH codes over ${\mathbb{F}}_q$ with designed distance $\delta =a{q}^{m-1}-1(\text{resp. }\delta =a\frac{q^m-1}{q-1})$ for all $1\le a\le q-1$, where q is a prime power and $m>1$ is a positive integer. As a consequence, we obtain an affirmative answer to two conjectures proposed by C. Ding in 2015. Furthermore, using the previous part, we extend some results of Yue and Hu [16], and we give the dimension and, in some cases, the Bose distance for a large designed distance in the range $[a\frac{q^m-1}{q-1},a\frac{q^m-1}{q-1}+T]$ for $0\le a\le q-2$, where $T=q^{\frac{m+1}{2}}-1$ if m is odd, and $T=2q^{\frac{m}{2}}-1$ if m is even.     

On eigenfunctions and maximal cliques of generalised Paley graphs of square order

Let GP $(q^2,m)$ be the m-Paley graph defined on the finite field with order $q^2$. We study eigenfunctions and maximal cliques in generalised Paley graphs GP $(q^2,m)$, where $m|(q+1)$. In particular, we explicitly construct maximal cliques of size $\frac{q+1}{m}$ or $\frac{q+1}{m}+1$ in GP $(q^2,m)$, and show the weight-distribution bound on the cardinality of the support of an eigenfunction is tight for the smallest eigenvalue $-\frac{q+1}{m}$ of GP $(q^2,m)$. These new results extend the work of Baker et al. and Goryainov et al. on Paley graphs of square order. We also study the stability of the Erdős-Ko-Rado theorem for GP $(q^2,m)$ (first proved by Sziklai).