A note on packing of uniform hypergraphs

Abstract

A packing of two $k$-uniform hypergraphs $H_1$ and $H_2$ is a set $\{H_1^{\prime },H_2^{\prime }\}$ of edge-disjoint sub-hypergraphs of the complete $k$-uniform hypergraph $K_n^{(k)}$ such that $H_1^{\prime }\cong H_1$ and $H_2^{\prime }\cong H_2$. Whilst the problem of packing of graphs (i.e. 2-uniform hypergraphs) has been studied extensively since seventies with many sharp results, much less is known about packing of general hypergraphs. In this paper we attempt to find the minimum possible sum of sizes $m(n,k)$ of two $k$-uniform, $n$-vertex hypergaphs which do not pack. We also prove a sufficient condition on the product of maximum degrees, which guarantees the packing.