Sharpness conjecture for the three-uniform Erdős–Frankl–Pach bound

Let M3(n)M_3(n) denote the maximum size of a family F([n]4)\mathcal{F}\subseteq\binom{[n]}{4} with VC(F)3\operatorname{VC}(\mathcal{F})\le 3. The paper establishes the lower bound

M3(n)(n13)+n3M_3(n)\ge \binom{n-1}{3}+n-3

for every n6n\ge 6. Three-uniform sharpness conjecture. For all sufficiently large nn,

M3(n)=(n13)+n3.M_3(n)=\binom{n-1}{3}+n-3.

This is presented as a suspected sharp bound; the restriction to sufficiently large nn is necessary because M3(8)45M_3(8)\ge45 while the displayed expression equals 4040.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Tuan Tran and Zixiang Xu, “Beating the Ahlswede–Khachatrian bound for the Erdős–Frankl–Pach problem”, arXiv:2606.23469 (2026).

Additional references

21 papers in this index state this conjecture (2007–2026). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:2508.13724, arXiv:2506.01739, arXiv:2504.14389, arXiv:2404.02322, arXiv:2402.05702, arXiv:2306.11362, arXiv:2211.16434, arXiv:2106.02129, arXiv:1902.03166, arXiv:1902.03881, arXiv:1811.03080, arXiv:1712.04438, and 8 more.

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