Hitting all maximum independent sets

Abstract

We describe an infinite family of graphs $G_n$, where $G_n$ has $n$ vertices, independence number at least $n/4$, and no set of less than $\sqrt{n}/2$ vertices intersects all its maximum independent sets. This is motivated by a question of Bollobás, Erdős and Tuza, and disproves a recent conjecture of Friedgut, Kalai and Kindler. Motivated by a related question of the last authors, we show that for every graph $G$ on $n$ vertices with independence number $(1/4+\eps)n$, the average independence number of an induced subgraph of $G$ on a uniform random subset of the vertices is at most $(1/4+\eps-Ω(\eps^2)) n$.

References in corpus (1)

• On the stability of graph independence number