Improved bounds for the triangle case of Aharoni's rainbow generalization of the Caccetta-Häggkvist conjecture

For a digraph $G$ and $v \in V(G)$, let $δ^+(v)$ be the number of out-neighbors of $v$ in $G$. The Caccetta-Häggkvist conjecture states that for all $k \ge 1$, if $G$ is a digraph with $n = |V(G)|$ such that $δ^+(v) \ge k$ for all $v \in V(G)$, then $G$ contains a directed cycle of length at most $\lceil n/k \rceil$. Aharoni proposed a generalization of this conjecture, that a simple edge-colored graph on $n$ vertices with $n$ color classes, each of size at least $k$, has a rainbow cycle of length at most $\lceil n/k \rceil$. Let us call $(α, β)$ \emph{triangular} if every simple edge-colored graph on $n$ vertices with at least $αn$ color classes, each with at least $βn$ edges, has a rainbow triangle. Aharoni, Holzman, and DeVos showed the following: $(9/8,1/3)$ is triangular; $(1,2/5)$ is triangular. In this paper, we improve those bounds, showing the following: $(1.1077,1/3)$ is triangular; $(1,0.3988)$ is triangular. Our methods give results for infinitely many pairs $(α, β)$, including $β< 1/3$; we show that $(1.3481,1/4)$ is triangular.

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