On Betti numbers of flag complexes with forbidden induced subgraphs

We analyse the asymptotic extremal growth rate of the Betti numbers of clique complexes of graphs on n vertices not containing a fixed forbidden induced subgraph H.In particular, we prove a theorem of the alternative: for any H the growth rate achieves exactly one of five possible exponentials, that is, independent of the field of coefficients, the nth root of the maximal total Betti number over n-vertex graphs with no induced copy of H has a limit, as n tends to infinity, and, ranging over all H, exactly five different limits are attained.For the interesting case where H is the 4-cycle, the above limit is 1, and we prove a superpolynomial upper bound.

A new approach to the Farkas theorem of the alternative

The classical Farkas theorem of the alternative is considered, which is widely used in various areas of mathematics and has numerous proofs and formulations. An entirely new elementary proof of this theorem is proposed. It is based on the consideration of a functional that, under Farkas’ condition, is bounded below on the whole space and attains a minimum. The assertion of Farkas’ theorem that a vector belongs to a cone is equivalent to the fact that the gradient of this functional is zero at the minimizer.