Stability and Turán Numbers of a Class of Hypergraphs via Lagrangians

Abstract

Given a family ofr-uniform hypergraphs${\cal F}$(orr-graphs for brevity), the Turán number ex(n,${\cal F})$of${\cal F}$is the maximum number of edges in anr-graph onnvertices that does not contain any member of${\cal F}$. A pair {u,v} iscoveredin a hypergraphGif some edge ofGcontains {u, v}. Given anr-graphFand a positive integerp⩾n(F), wheren(F) denotes the number of vertices inF, letHFpdenote ther-graph obtained as follows. Label the vertices ofFasv1,. . .,vn(F). Add new verticesvn(F)+1,. . .,vp. For each pair of verticesvi, vjnot covered inF, add a setBi,jofr− 2 new vertices and the edge {vi, vj} ∪Bi,j, where theBi,jare pairwise disjoint over all such pairs {i, j}. We callHFpthe expanded p-clique with an embedded F. For a relatively large family ofF, we show that for all sufficiently largen, ex(n,HFp) = |Tr(n, p− 1)|, whereTr(n, p− 1) is the balanced complete (p− 1)-partiter-graph onnvertices. We also establish structural stability of near-extremal graphs. Our results generalize or strengthen several earlier results and provide a class of hypergraphs for which the Turán number is exactly determined (for largen).