On the $(k+2,k)$-problem of Brown, Erdős and Sós for $k=5,6,7$

Abstract

Let $f^{(r)}(n;s,k)$ denote the maximum number of edges in an $n$-vertex $r$-uniform hypergraph containing no subgraph with $k$ edges and at most $s$ vertices. Brown, Erdős and Sós [New directions in the theory of graphs (Proc. Third Ann Arbor Conf., Univ. Michigan 1971), pp. 53--63, Academic Press 1973] conjectured that the limit ${\lim }_{n\to \infty }{n}^{-2}{f}^{(3)}(n;k+2,k)$ exists for all $k$. The value of the limit was previously determined for $k=2$ in the original paper of Brown, Erdős and Sós, for $k=3$ by Glock [Bull. Lond. Math. Soc. 51 (2019) 230--236] and for $k=4$ by Glock, Joos, Kim, Kühn, Lichev and Pikhurko [Proc. Amer. Math. Soc., Series B, 11 (2024) 173-186] while Delcourt and Postle [Proc. Amer. Math. Soc., 152 (2024), 1881-1891] proved the conjecture (without determining the limiting value). In this paper, we determine the value of the limit in the Brown-Erdős-Sós Problem for $k\in \{5,6,7\}$. More generally, we obtain the value of ${\lim }_{n\to \infty }{n}^{-2}{f}^{(r)}(n;rk-2k+2,k)$ for all $r\ge 3$ and $k\in \{5,6,7\}$. In addition, by combining these new values with recent results of Bennett, Cushman and Dudek [arXiv:2309.00182] we obtain new asymptotic values for several generalised Ramsey numbers.

44 pages, published by Canadian Journal of Mathematics (https://doi.org/10.4153/S0008414X25000021), author accepted version converted to CJM style