Hypergraphs with no special cycles

Abstract

A special cycle in a hypergraph is a cyclex1E1x2E2x3 ...xnEnx1 ofn distinct verticesxi andn distinct edgesEj (n≧3) whereEi∩{x1,x2, ...,xn}={xi,xi+1} (xn+1=x1). In the equivalent (0, 1)-matrix formulation, a special cycle corresponds to a square submatrix which is the incidence matrix of a cycle of size at least 3. Hypergraphs with no special cycles have been called totally balanced by Lovasz. Simple hypergraphs with no special cycles onm vertices can be shown to have at most (2m)+m+1 edges where the empty edge is allowed. Such hypergraphs with the maximum number of edges have a fascinating structure and are called solutions. The main result of this paper is an algorithm that shows that a simple hypergraph on at mostm vertices with no special cycles can be completed (by adding edges) to a solution.