The independent neighborhoods process

A triangle T^(r) in an r-uniform hypergraph is a set of r+1 edges such that r of them share a common (r-1)-set of vertices and the last edge contains the remaining vertex from each of the first r edges. Our main result is that the random greedy triangle-free process on n points terminates in an r-uniform hypergraph with independence number O((n log n)^1/r). As a consequence, using recent results on independent sets in hypergraphs, the Ramsey number r(T^(r),K_s^(r)) has order of magnitude s^r/ log s. This answers questions posed in 4, 10] and generalizes the celebrated results of Ajtai–Komlós–Szemerédi 1] and Kim 9] to hypergraphs.