Set System Blowups

Abstract

We prove that given a constant $k \ge 2$ and a large set system $\mathcal{F}$ of sets of size at most $w$, a typical $k$-tuple of sets $(S_1, \cdots, S_k)$ from $\mathcal{F}$ can be ``blown up" in the following sense: for each $1 \le i \le k$, we can find a large subfamily $\mathcal{F}_i$ containing $S_i$ so that for $i \neq j$, if $T_i \in \mathcal{F}_i$ and $T_j \in \mathcal{F}_j$ , then $T_i \cap T_j=S_i \cap S_j$. We also show that the answer to the multicolor version of the sunflower conjecture is the same as the answer for the original, up to an exponential factor.