A new stability theorem for the expansion of cliques

Xizhi Liu, Sayan Mukherjee

Published 2020-06-08Version 1

Let $\ell \ge r\ge 3$. The $r$-graph $H_{\ell+1}^{r}$ is the hypergraph obtained from $K_{\ell+1}$ by adding a set of $r-2$ new vertices to each edge. Using a stability result for $H_{\ell+1}^{r}$, Pikhurko determined ${\rm ex}(n,H_{\ell+1}^{r})$ for sufficiently large $n$. We prove a new type of stability theorem for $H_{\ell+1}^{r}$ that goes beyond this result, and determine the structure of $H_{\ell+1}^{r}$-free hypergraphs $\mathcal{H}$ that satisfy a certain inequality involving the sizes of $\mathcal{H}$ and its shadow $\partial\mathcal{H}$. Our result can be viewed as an extension of a stability theorem of Keevash about the Kruskal-Katona theorem to $H_{\ell+1}^{r}$-free hypergraphs.