Supersaturation and stability for forbidden subposet problems

TL;DR

This paper investigates the number of butterfly subposets in set families exceeding the maximum size that avoids them, establishing asymptotic bounds and tight constructions for the supersaturation problem in forbidden subposet theory.

Contribution

It provides the first asymptotic bounds and exact minimal counts for butterfly subposets in supersaturated families, advancing understanding of forbidden subposet configurations.

Findings

Established asymptotic lower bounds for butterfly copies in supersaturated families.

Constructed families that asymptotically achieve these bounds.

Proved exact minimal number of butterflies for small excess sizes.

Abstract

We address a supersaturation problem in the context of forbidden subposets. A family $\mathcal{F}$ of sets is said to contain the poset $P$ if there is an injection $i:P \rightarrow \mathcal{F}$ such that $p \le_P q$ implies $i(p) \subset i (q)$. The poset on four elements $a,b,c,d$ with $a,b \le c,d$ is called butterfly. The maximum size of a family $\mathcal{F} \subseteq 2^{[n]}$ that does not contain a butterfly is $\Sigma(n,2)=\binom{n}{\lfloor n/2 \rfloor}+\binom{n}{\lfloor n/2 \rfloor+1}$ as proved by De Bonis, Katona, and Swanepoel. We prove that if $\mathcal{F} \subseteq 2^{[n]}$ contains $\Sigma(n,2)+E$ sets, then it has to contain at least $(1-o(1))E(\lceil n/2 \rceil +1)\binom{\lceil n/2\rceil}{2}$ copies of the butterfly provided $E\le 2^{n^{1-\varepsilon}}$ for some positive $\varepsilon$. We show by a construction that this is asymptotically tight and for small values of $E$ we show that the minimum number of butterflies contained in $\mathcal{F}$ is exactly $E(\lceil n/2 \rceil +1)\binom{\lceil n/2\rceil}{2}$.