EKR Sets for Large <Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">r</Emphasis>

Let \(\mathcal {A}\subset \left( {\begin{array}{c}n]\\ r\end{array}}\right) \) be a compressed, intersecting family and let \(X\subset n]\). Let \(\mathcal {A}(X)=\{A\in \mathcal {A}:A\cap X\ne \emptyset \}\) and \(\mathcal {S}_{n,r}=\left( {\begin{array}{c}n]\\ r\end{array}}\right) (\{1\})\). Motivated by the Erd?s–Ko–Rado theorem, Borg asked for which \(X\subset 2,n]\) do we have \(|\mathcal {A}(X)|\le |\mathcal {S}_{n,r}(X)|\) for all compressed, intersecting families \(\mathcal {A}\)? We call X that satisfy this property EKR. Borg classified EKR sets X such that \(|X|\ge r\). Barber classified X, with \(|X|\le r\), such that X is EKR for sufficiently large n, and asked how large n must be. We prove n is sufficiently large when n grows quadratically in r. In the case where \(\mathcal {A}\) has a maximal element, we sharpen this bound to \(n>\varphi ^{2}r\) implies \(|\mathcal {A}(X)|\le |\mathcal {S}_{n,r}(X)|\). We conclude by giving a generating function that speeds up computation of \(|\mathcal {A}(X)|\) in comparison with the naïve methods.