Two extremal problems on intersecting families

Abstract

In this short note, we address two problems in extremal set theory regarding intersecting families. The first problem is a question posed by Kupavskii: is it true that given two disjoint cross-intersecting families $\mathcal{A}, \mathcal{B} \subset \binom{[n]}{k}$, they must satisfy $\min\{|\mathcal{A}|, |\mathcal{B}|\} \le \frac{1}{2} \binom{n-1}{k-1}$? We give an affirmative answer for $n \ge 2k^2$, and construct families showing that this range is essentially the best one could hope for, up to a constant factor. The second problem is a conjecture of Frankl. It states that for $n \ge 3k$, the maximum diversity of an intersecting family $\mathcal{F} \subset \binom{[n]}{k}$ is equal to $\binom{n-3}{k-2}$. We are able to find a construction beating the conjectured bound for $n$ slightly larger than $3k$, which also disproves a conjecture of Kupavskii.