Set systems without a simplex, Helly hypergraphs and union-efficient families

Abstract

We present equivalent formulations for concepts related to set families for which every subfamily with empty intersection has a bounded sub-collection with empty intersection. Hereby, we summarize the progress on the related questions about the maximum size of such families. In this work we solve a boundary case of a problem of Tuza for non-trivial $q$-Helly families, by applying Karamata's inequality and determining the minimum size of a $2$-self-centered graph for which the common neighborhood of every pair of vertices contains a clique of size $q-2$.