O'Neill's supersaturation conjecture for eventown families

About 3 years old · traced to

Let n>1n>1, let [n]={1,2,…,n}[n]=\{1,2,\ldots,n\}, and let 2[n]2^{[n]} denote the family of all subsets of [n][n]. For a family A⊂2[n]\mathcal{A}\subset 2^{[n]}, write op(A)op(\mathcal{A}) for the number of pairs of distinct members A,B∈AA,B\in\mathcal{A} such that ∣A∩B∣|A\cap B| is odd. Fix an integer ss satisfying

1≤s≤2⌊n/2⌋−2⌊n/4⌋.1\le s\le 2^{\lfloor n/2\rfloor}-2^{\lfloor n/4\rfloor}.

O'Neill's supersaturation conjecture. If A⊂2[n]\mathcal{A}\subset 2^{[n]} consists of even-sized subsets and

∣A∣≥2⌊n/2⌋+s,|\mathcal{A}|\ge 2^{\lfloor n/2\rfloor}+s,

then

op(A)≥s⋅2⌊n/2⌋−1.op(\mathcal{A})\ge s\cdot 2^{\lfloor n/2\rfloor-1}.

This conjecture gives a supersaturation bound for eventown: once an even-set family exceeds the extremal size 2⌊n/2⌋2^{\lfloor n/2\rfloor}, it predicts a linear lower bound on the number of pairs whose intersection has odd size. The source attributes the conjecture to O'Neill; the supplied material does not establish whether it has been resolved.

References

Primary source

Xiaolei Niu, Yinghui Hang and Haitao Cao, “Constructions for supersaturation of eventown problems”, arXiv:2607.20812 (2026).

Additional references

2 papers in this index state this conjecture (2023–2026). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:2302.05586.

Progress summary

Never refreshed

Nothing recorded yet. Refresh searches the literature and the public web for attempts on this problem, and writes the first summary here.

Solutions 0

No solutions have been posted yet.