Relative Turán Numbers for Hypergraph Cycles

Abstract

For an $r$-uniform hypergraph $H$ and a family of $r$-uniform hypergraphs $\mathcal{F}$, the relative Turán number $\mathrm{ex}(H,\mathcal{F})$ is the maximum number of edges in an $\mathcal{F}$-free subgraph of $H$. In this paper we give lower bounds on $\mathrm{ex}(H,\mathcal{F})$ for certain families of hypergraph cycles $\mathcal{F}$ such as Berge cycles and loose cycles. In particular, if ${\mathcal{C}}_{\ell }^3$ denotes the set of all $3$-uniform Berge $\ell$-cycles and $H$ is a 3-uniform hypergraph with maximum degree $\Delta$, we prove \[\mathrm{ex}(H,\mathcal{C}_4^{3})\ge Δ^{-3/4-o(1)}e(H),\] \[\mathrm{ex}(H,\mathcal{C}_5^{3})\ge Δ^{-3/4-o(1)}e(H),\] and these bounds are tight up to the $o(1)$ term.

20 pages, minor typos corrected, to appear in Discrete Mathematics