Intersecting Families are Essentially Contained in Juntas

Abstract

A family$\J$of subsets of {1, . . .,n} is called aj-junta if there existsJ⊆ {1, . . .,n}, with |J| =j, such that the membership of a setSin$\J$depends only onS∩J.In this paper we provide a simple description of intersecting families of sets. Letnandkbe positive integers withk<n/2, and let$\A$be a family of pairwise intersecting subsets of {1, . . .,n}, all of sizek. We show that such a family is essentially contained in aj-junta$\J$, wherejdoes not depend onnbut only on the ratiok/nand on the interpretation of ‘essentially’.Whenk=o(n) we prove that every intersecting family ofk-sets is almost contained in a dictatorship, a 1-junta (which by the Erdős–Ko–Rado theorem is a maximal intersecting family): for any such intersecting family$\A$there exists an elementi∈ {1, . . .,n} such that the number of sets in$\A$that do not containiis of order$\C {n-2}{k-2}$(which is approximately$\frac {k}{n-k}$times the size of a maximal intersecting family).Our methods combine traditional combinatorics with results stemming from the theory of Boolean functions and discrete Fourier analysis.