On a stronger reconstruction notion for monoids and clones

Motivated by reconstruction results by Rubin, we introduce a new reconstruction notion for permutation groups, transformation monoids and clones, called automatic action compatibility, which entails automatic homeomorphicity. We further give a characterization of automatic homeomorphicity for transformation monoids on arbitrary carriers with a dense group of invertibles having automatic homeomorphicity. We then show how to lift automatic action compatibility from groups to monoids and from monoids to clones under fairly weak assumptions. We finally employ these theorems to get automatic action compatibility results for monoids and clones over several well-known countable structures, including the strictly ordered rationals, the directed and undirected version of the random graph, the random tournament and bipartite graph, the generic strictly ordered set, and the directed and undirected versions of the universal homogeneous Henson graphs.

Monochromatic trees in random tournaments

We prove that, with high probability, in every 2-edge-colouring of the random tournament on n vertices there is a monochromatic copy of every oriented tree of order $O(n{\rm{/}}\sqrt {{\rm{log}} \ n} )$. This generalizes a result of the first, third and fourth authors, who proved the same statement for paths, and is tight up to a constant factor.

On the Maximum Number of Spanning Copies of an Orientation in a Tournament

For an orientation H with n vertices, let T(H) denote the maximum possible number of labelled copies of H in an n-vertex tournament. It is easily seen that T(H) ≥ n!/2e(H), as the latter is the expected number of such copies in a random tournament. For n odd, let R(H) denote the maximum possible number of labelled copies of H in an n-vertex regular tournament. In fact, Adler, Alon and Ross proved that for H=Cn, the directed Hamilton cycle, T(Cn) ≥ (e−o(1))n!/2n, and it was observed by Alon that already R(Cn) ≥ (e−o(1))n!/2n. Similar results hold for the directed Hamilton path Pn. In other words, for the Hamilton path and cycle, the lower bound derived from the expectation argument can be improved by a constant factor. In this paper we significantly extend these results, and prove that they hold for a larger family of orientations H which includes all bounded-degree Eulerian orientations and all bounded-degree balanced orientations, as well as many others. One corollary of our method is that for any fixed k, every k-regular orientation H with n vertices satisfies T(H) ≥ (ek−o(1))n!/2e(H), and in fact, for n odd, R(H) ≥ (ek−o(1))n!/2e(H).

Correlation of Paths Between Distinct Vertices in a Randomly Oriented Graph

We prove that in a random tournament the events $\{s\rightarrow a\}$ (meaning that there is a directed path from $s$ to $a$) and $\{t\rightarrow b\}$ are positively correlated, for distinct vertices $a,s,b,t \in K_n$. It is also proven that the correlation between the events $\{s\rightarrow a\}$ and $\{t\rightarrow b\}$ in the random graphs $G(n,p)$ and $G(n,m)$ with random orientation is positive for every fixed $p>0$ and sufficiently large $n$ (with $m=\bigl\lfloor p \binom{n}{2}\bigr\rfloor$). We conjecture it to be positive for all $p$ and all $n$. An exact recursion for $\mathsf{P}(\{s\rightarrow a\} \cap \{t\rightarrow b\})$ in $G(n,p)$ is given.

Decidability of Definability

For a fixed countably infinite structure Γ with finite relational signature τ, we study the following computational problem: input are quantifier-free τ-formulas ϕ0, ϕ1, …, ϕn that define relations R0, R1, …, Rn over Γ. The question is whether the relation R0 is primitive positive definable from R1, …, Rn, i.e., definable by a first-order formula that uses only relation symbols for R1, …, Rn, equality, conjunctions, and existential quantification (disjunction, negation, and universal quantification are forbidden).We show decidability of this problem for all structures Γ that have a first-order definition in an ordered homogeneous structure Δ with a finite relational signature whose age is a Ramsey class and determined by finitely many forbidden substructures. Examples of structures Γ with this property are the order of the rationals, the random graph, the homogeneous universal poset, the random tournament, all homogeneous universal C-relations, and many more. We also obtain decidability of the problem when we replace primitive positive definability by existential positive, or existential definability. Our proof makes use of universal algebraic and model theoretic concepts, Ramsey theory, and a recent characterization of Ramsey classes in topological dynamics.

A Counter-Intuitive Correlation in a Random Tournament

Consider a randomly oriented graphG= (V, E) and leta,sandbbe three distinct vertices inV. We study the correlation between the events {a→s} and {s→b}. We show that, counter-intuitively, whenGis the complete graphKn,n≥ 5, then the correlation is positive. (It is negative forn= 3 and zero forn= 4.) We briefly discuss and pose problems for the same question on other graphs.