Colourings of Uniform Hypergraphs with Large Girth and Applications

Abstract

This paper deals with a combinatorial problem concerning colourings of uniform hypergraphs with large girth. We prove that ifHis ann-uniform non-r-colourable simple hypergraph then its maximum edge degree Δ(H) satisfies the inequality$$ \Delta(H)\geqslant c\cdot r^{n-1}\ffrac{n(\ln\ln n)^2}{\ln n} $$for some absolute constantc> 0.As an application of our probabilistic technique we establish a lower bound for the classical van der Waerden numberW(n, r), the minimum naturalNsuch that in an arbitrary colouring of the set of integers {1,. . .,N} withrcolours there exists a monochromatic arithmetic progression of lengthn. We prove that$$ W(n,r)\geqslant c\cdot r^{n-1}\ffrac{(\ln\ln n)^2}{\ln n}. $$