Defect and transference versions of the Alon-Frankl-Lovasz theorem

Abstract

Confirming a conjecture of Erdős on the chromatic number of Kneser hypergraphs, Alon, Frankl and Lovász proved that in any $q$-colouring of the edges of the complete $r$-uniform hypergraph, there exists a monochromatic matching of size $\lfloor \frac{n+q-1}{r+q-1}\rfloor$. In this paper, we prove a transference version of this theorem. More precisely, for fixed $q$ and $r$, we show that with high probability, a monochromatic matching of approximately the same size exists in any $q$-colouring of a random hypergraph, already when the average degree is a sufficiently large constant. In fact, our main new result is a defect version of the Alon--Frankl--Lovász theorem for almost complete hypergraphs. From this, the transference version is obtained via a variant of the weak hypergraph regularity lemma. The proof of the defect version uses tools from extremal set theory developed in the study of the Erdős matching conjecture.

Final version as accepted for publication in Combinatorics, Probability and Computing + Appendix