On resilient hypergraphs

Abstract

The matching number of a $k$-graph is the maximum number of pairwise disjoint edges in it. The $k$-graph is called $t$-resilient if omitting $t$ vertices never decreases its matching number. The complete $k$-graph on $sk+k-1$ vertices has matching number $s$ and it is easily seen to be $(k-1)$-resilient. We conjecture that this is maximal for $k=3$ and $s$ arbitrary. The main result verifies this conjecture for $s=2$. Then Theorem 1.9 provides a considerable improvement on the known upper bounds for $s\geq 3$.