Tony Huynh, Rainbow triangles and the Erdős-Hajnal problem in projective geometries

We formulate a geometric version of the Erdős-Hajnal conjecture that applies to finite projective geometries rather than graphs. In fact, we give a natural extension of the ‘multicoloured’ version of the Erdős-Hajnal conjecture. Roughly, our conjecture states that every colouring of the points of a finite projective geometry of dimension $n$ not containing a fixed colouring of a fixed projective geometry $H$ must contain a subspace of dimension polynomial in $n$ avoiding some colour.

When $H$ is a ‘triangle’, there are three different colourings, all of which we resolve. We handle the case that $H$ is a ‘rainbow’ triangle by proving that rainbow-triangle-free colourings of projective geometries are exactly those that admit a certain decomposition into two-coloured pieces. This is closely analogous to a theorem of Gallai on rainbow-triangle-free coloured complete graphs. The two non-rainbow colourings of $H$ are handled via a recent breakthrough result in additive combinatorics due to Kelley and Meka.

This is joint work with Carolyn Chun, James Dylan Douthitt, Wayne Ge, Matthew E. Kroeker, and Peter Nelson.