%! TEX root = PC.tex % vim: tw=80 ft=tex % 24/10/2025 09AM \textbf{Sketch pad:} \begin{enumerate}[\bfseries {Idea} I:] \item Greedily build an \gls{ind} set $\ge \frac{n}{d + 1}$. \item Choose a set at random?? Choose each vertex with probability $p$. But note that if $p \gg \frac{1}{d}$, then for each vertex, we are likely to pick $pd \gg 1$ of its neighbours. \begin{center} \includegraphics[width=0.3\linewidth]{images/a7d0adcd14e942b3.png} \end{center} \item Use \gls{locallem}? Too much dependence. \begin{center} \includegraphics[width=0.3\linewidth]{images/52737afda57a4fc1.png} \end{center} \item Combine Ideas I and II by using a random greedy process. Take a vertex, remove its neighbours. Then using the triangle-freeness, we should get that density decreases. \begin{center} \includegraphics[width=0.3\linewidth]{images/cb9c79bea6e14f94.png} \end{center} \textbf{Heuristic:} Let's say we build an \gls{ind} set $I$ using this process with $|I| = pn$. Assumption: ``the set $I$ looks like a random set of its density -- apart from the fact that it's \gls{ind}''. Let's consider the largest $p$ we can hope for. Say a vertex $v$ \emph{is open} if $N(v) \cap I = \emptyset$. \begin{center} \includegraphics[width=0.3\linewidth]{images/c4947450e1984195.png} \end{center} We might expect \[ \Pbb_p(\text{$v$ is open}) \stackrel{!}{\approx} (1 - p)^d .\] Note that $\Pbb_p(\text{$v$ is open}) \ll p$ then process is basically over (``amount of vertices left that we could potentially use is $\ll$ than the number of vertices we have so far, so not really any point in trying to collect them''). So solve $(1 - p)^d = p$. First estimate that we need $p = \frac{1}{d^{1 + o(1)}}$, and then using this we can solve to get \[ p = (1 + o(1)) \frac{\log d}{d} .\] \end{enumerate} \textbf{Fact} (Jensen's inequality)\textbf{.} Let $\varphi$ be a convex function on $\Rbb$. Let $X$ be a random variable. Then \[ \Ebb \varphi(X) \ge \varphi(\Ebb X) .\] \textbf{Fact.} Let $G$ be a graph with average degree $d = \frac{2e(G)}{n}$. Then \[ \sum_{x \sim V(G)} \sum_{y \sim x} d(y) = \sum_{x \in V(G)} d(x)^2 \ge nd^2 \] \begin{proof} \begin{align*} \sum_{x \in V(G)} \sum_{y \sim x} d(y) &= \sum_x \sum_y d(y) \indicator{x \sim y} \\ &= \sum_y d(y) \sum_x \indicator{x \sim y} \\ &= \sum_y d(y)^2 \end{align*} The inequality follows by Jensen. \end{proof} Now we will prove \nameref{thm:shearermaxdegtrianglefree} (in fact a slight strengthening). We discussed earlier that the proof will involve repeatedly removing vertices and tracking a density increase. Shearer found a very elegant way of tracking this, that makes the proof very clean and magical looking, but the key idea is really the sketch argument given above. Define \[ f(d) = \frac{d \log d - d + 1}{(d - 1)^2} .\] Note $f(d) \in (0, 1)$ for $1 < d$, $f'(d) < 0$ and $f''(d) \ge 0$. We have \[ f(x) \ge f(x_0) + (x - x_0) f'(x_0) \] by remainder form of Taylor's theorem. \begin{fcthm}[Shearer on $f(d)$] Assuming: - $G$ an $n$ vertex graph - triangle-free - average degree $d$ Then: \[ \indnum(G) \ge f(d) n .\] \end{fcthm} \begin{proof} Let $v \in V(G)$. Define $G' = G - N(v) - v$. We have \[ \indnum(G) \ge 1 + \indnum(G') \ge 1 + (n - d(v) - 1) f(d') ,\] where \[ d' = \text{average degree of $G'$} = \frac{2e(G')}{(n - d(v) - 1)} \] and \[ e(G') = e(G) - \sum_{y \sim v} d(y) \] by triangle-free property. \begin{center} \includegraphics[width=0.6\linewidth]{images/be36246d679b46d1.png} \end{center} Using the earlier working, we have \begin{align*} \indnum(G) &\ge 1 + f(d)(n - d(v) - 1) + (d' - d)f'(d)(n - d(v) - 1) \\ &\ge f(d) n - f(d)(d(v) + 1) + f'(d)\left(2e(G') - 2e(G) + d \cdot d(v) + d\right) + 1 \\ &\ge f(d) n - f(d)(d(v) + 1) + f'(d)\left(2e(G) - 2\sum_{y \sim v} d(y) - 2e(G) + d \cdot d(v) + d\right) + 1 \end{align*} We want \[ f(d) (d(v) + 1) \le f'(d) \left( -2\sum_{y \sim v} d(y) + d \cdot d(v) + d\right) + 1 .\] We claim this holds on average. Average of left hand side is \[ \frac{1}{n} \sum_{v \in V(G)} f(d)(d(v) + 1) = f(d)(d + 1) .\] Average of right hand side is (using $f'(d) < 0$), \begin{align*} \frac{1}{n} \sum \text{RHS} &= 1 + f'(d) \left( -\frac{2}{n} \sum_v \sum_{y \sim v} d(y) + d^2 + d \right) \\ &\ge 1 + f'(d) \left( -2d^2 + d^2 + d \right) \\ &= 1 + f'(d) (d - d^2) \end{align*} In fact, $f$ satisfies the differential equation \[ f(x)(x + 1) = f'(x) (x - x^2) + 1 .\] So the inequality holds on average, and thus there exists a good choice of $v$ for the induction. \end{proof} In this proof, note that this function $f$ is not essential to the proof and is just helpful to make the presentation as short as possible. We now give another proof of \cref{thm:shearermaxdegtrianglefree}, but with some constant $c$ instead of $1 + o(1)$, and this time we'll assume the maximum degree is bounded rather than the average degree: \begin{proof}[Second proof of \cref{thm:shearermaxdegtrianglefree}] Choose an \gls{ind} set $I$ uniformly at random among all \gls{ind} sets. We'll show \[ \Ebb|I| \ge c \frac{n}{d} \log d .\] This is an example of what is known as the ``hard-core model''. It is called ``hard'' because we have a hard constraint on every edge (we require that each edge is not present).