On Ramsey numbers of hedgehogs

Abstract

Abstract The hedgehog Ht is a 3-uniform hypergraph on vertices $1, \ldots ,t + \left({\matrix{t \cr 2}}\right)$ such that, for any pair (i, j) with 1 ≤ i < j ≤ t, there exists a unique vertex k > t such that {i, j, k} is an edge. Conlon, Fox and Rödl proved that the two-colour Ramsey number of the hedgehog grows polynomially in the number of its vertices, while the four-colour Ramsey number grows exponentially in the square root of the number of vertices. They asked whether the two-colour Ramsey number of the hedgehog Ht is nearly linear in the number of its vertices. We answer this question affirmatively, proving that r(Ht) = O(t2 ln t).