Some New Bounds For Cover-Free Families Through Biclique Cover

TL;DR

This paper establishes new bounds for cover-free families by linking their minimal size to biclique coverings of specific bipartite graphs, providing exact values in some cases and leveraging combinatorial and algebraic structures.

Contribution

It introduces a novel graph-theoretic approach to analyze cover-free families, deriving new bounds and exact values for their minimal size using biclique cover numbers.

Findings

Established that $N((r,w;d),t)$ equals the $d$-biclique covering number of $I_t(r,w)

Derived new lower bounds for $N((r,w;1),t)$ involving combinatorial coefficients and logarithms

Determined exact values of $N((r,w;d),t)$ for certain parameters, including cases related to Hadamard matrices

Abstract

An $(r,w;d)$ cover-free family $(CFF)$ is a family of subsets of a finite set such that the intersection of any $r$ members of the family contains at least $d$ elements that are not in the union of any other $w$ members. The minimum number of elements for which there exists an $(r,w;d)-CFF$ with $t$ blocks is denoted by $N((r,w;d),t)$. In this paper, we show that the value of $N((r,w;d),t)$ is equal to the $d$-biclique covering number of the bipartite graph $I_t(r,w)$ whose vertices are all $w$- and $r$-subsets of a $t$-element set, where a $w$-subset is adjacent to an $r$-subset if their intersection is empty. Next, we introduce some new bounds for $N((r,w;d),t)$. For instance, we show that for $r\geq w$ and $r\geq 2$ $$ N((r,w;1),t) \geq c{{r+w\choose w+1}+{r+w-1 \choose w+1}+ 3 {r+w-4 \choose w-2} \over \log r} \log (t-w+1),$$ where $c$ is a constant satisfies the well-known bound $N((r,1;1),t)\geq c\frac{r^2}{\log r}\log t$. Also, we determine the exact value of $N((r,w;d),t)$ for some values of $d$. Finally, we show that $N((1,1;d),4d-1)=4d-1$ whenever there exists a Hadamard matrix of order 4d.