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Park 2024 proof kahn kalai conjecture

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definitions: Fixes the product-measure, cover, smallness, threshold, minimal-edge, and bounded-hypergraph conventions used throughout the proof.

fractional_threshold_context: Records the exact external fractional theorem and the historical comparison conjecture without treating either as part of the Park--Pham proof chain.

iteration: Iterates the minimum-fragment split, proves the original-up-set invariant, controls sample size, and sums the conditional cover costs.

lemma_2_1: Counts minimum fragments by their union with the random sample and obtains an exponentially small expected p-cost.

minimum_fragments: Splits a bounded hypergraph into edges with a cheap fragment cover and a residual hypergraph whose edge-size bound contracts by a factor of 0.9.

proposition_2_3: At the end of the fragment iteration, either the accumulated random set contains an edge of the original hypergraph or the accumulated fragments cover it.

theorem_1_1: Every nontrivial increasing property has threshold at most a universal constant times its expectation threshold times log ell, where ell is the larger of 2 and the largest size of a minimal member.

theorem_1_4: For each non-p-small ell-bounded hypergraph on n points, a uniformly random set of size of order p n log ell contains one of its edges except with probability inverse-polylogarithmic in ell.


Jinyoung Park and Huy Tuan Pham, A proof of the Kahn--Kalai conjecture, Journal of the American Mathematical Society 37 (2024), no. 1, 235--243, DOI 10.1090/jams/1028.

Source versions

The selected canonical source is the published JAMS article, nine physical pages with printed pages 235--243. It was published online on August 7, 2023 and appeared in the January 2024 issue. The published JAMS PDF prints "©2023 American Mathematical Society" on its first page and, in every page footer, "License or copyright restrictions may apply to redistribution; see https://www.ams.org/journal-terms-of-use", every other right reserved. For the arXiv v2 PDF, the arXiv record names the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (arXiv:2203.17207).

The separately retained arXiv v2 manuscript is eight pages and dated April 13, 2023; it adds an abstract to its first page and uses a wider page layout, so its pagination differs from the journal artifact. All displayed definitions, numbered results, equations, and proof steps used in this compilation agree under a full page-by-page comparison. The journal version changes front matter, bibliographic details, acknowledgments, and some expository prose. Result pages cite the journal's printed page numbers. In the arXiv v2 PDF, equations (1)--(3) and Theorem 1.1 are on p. 1, equations (4)--(6) on p. 2, Theorem 1.2, Conjecture 1.3, the reformulation and Theorem 1.4 on p. 3, Remark 1.5, the derivation of Theorem 1.1, the conventions and equations (8)--(10) on p. 4, Section 2.1 and Lemma 2.1 on p. 5, the proof of Lemma 2.1 on pp. 5--6, and Section 2.2 with Proposition 2.3 on pp. 6--7. The arXiv record is https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.17207.

Result and proof map

  • Definitions records product measure, pp-small covers, q(F)q(\mathcal F), minimal edges, and the elementary inequality q≤pcq\le p_c.
  • Minimum fragments gives the deterministic large-fragment/residual split and its exact cover and contraction properties.
  • Lemma 2.1 proves the exponentially small expected cost of the large-fragment cover.
  • The iteration proves the shrinking edge bound, the original-up-set invariant, the sample budget, and the inverse-polylogarithmic total-cost estimate.
  • Proposition 2.3 proves that at the end the random set contains an edge or the fragments cover the hypergraph.
  • Theorem 1.4 and Remark 1.5 combine the dichotomy with Markov's inequality to show that the random set contains an edge except with probability O((log⁡ℓ)−c)O((\log\ell)^{-c}).
  • Theorem 1.1 derives the Kahn--Kalai bound pc(F)≤Kq(F)log⁡ℓ(F)p_c(\mathcal F)\le Kq(\mathcal F)\log\ell(\mathcal F) by binomial concentration.
  • Fractional context records the exact external theorem of Frankston--Kahn--Narayanan--Park and Talagrand's historical comparison conjecture. Neither is an input to the Park--Pham proof.

Explicit source repairs and limits

The source convention of omitting floors and ceilings is restored on the proof pages. Lemma 2.1 is written in the harmless stronger form w≥LpNw\ge LpN, which is exactly what its binomial-ratio proof supplies and what the iteration needs after the ground set shrinks. In the proof of Proposition 2.3, the stopping edge is Si−1∈GiS_{i-1}\in\mathcal G_i; the printed Si∈GiS_i\in\mathcal G_i is an evident index mismatch because Gi⊆Hi−1\mathcal G_i\subseteq\mathcal H_{i-1}. The fractional definition's printed 2V2^V is corrected to 2X2^X, the fixed ground set.

The complete direct proof of Theorem 1.1 is reconstructed here. The external fractional theorem is stated only at its recorded scope, and its proof is not part of this unit. The applications the paper cites on p. 236, to perfect matchings in random hypergraphs and to bounded-degree spanning trees in random graphs, are not recorded here.

Bears on

  • Problem 202, through the use of Theorem 1.1 in the later sharp analysis of non-intersecting arithmetic progressions.
  • Problem 1190, through the same use of Theorem 1.1, which Ho's transfer carries to the reciprocal-sum estimate.

Only the edition under an open license is held; the source's other editions are not, since no license on record permits their redistribution, and the card cites the edition it names above.