A lower bound on the independence number of arbitrary hypergraphs

We present a lower bound on the independence number of arbitrary hypergraphs in terms of the degree vectors. The degree vector of a vertex v is given by d(v) = (d₁(v), d₂(v), …) where d_m(v) is the number of edges of size m containing v. We define a function f with the property that any hypergraph H = (V, E) satisfies α(H) ≥ Σ_v∈V f(d(v)). This lower bound is sharp when H is a match, and it generalizes known bounds of Caro/Wei and Caro/Tuza for ordinary graphs and uniform hypergraphs. Furthermore, an algorithm for computing independent sets of size as guaranteed by the lower bound is given. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Graph Theory 30: 213–221, 1999