Intersection problems and a correlation inequality for integer sequences

Abstract

Let us consider a collection $\mathcal{G}$ of codewords of length $n$ over an alphabet of size $s$. Let $t_1,\dots ,t_s$ be nonnegative integers. What is the maximum of $|\mathcal{G}|$ subject to the condition that any two codewords should have at least $t_i$ positions where both have letter $i$ ($1\le i\le s$). In the case $s=2$ it is a longstanding open question. Quite surprisingly, we obtain an almost complete answer for $s\ge 3$. The main tool is a correlation inequality.