On the Prague dimension of sparse random graphs

Abstract

The Prague dimension of a graph $G$ is defined as the minimum number of complete graphs whose direct product contains $G$ as an induced subgraph. Introduced in the 1970s by Ne\v{s}et\v{r}il, Pultr, and R\"odl -- and motivated by the work of Dushnik and Miller, as well as by the induced Ramsey theorem -- determining the Prague dimension of a graph is a notoriously hard problem. In this paper, we show that for all $\varepsilon > 0$ and $p$ such that $ n^{-1+\varepsilon} \le p \le n^{-\varepsilon}$, with high probability the Prague dimension of $G_{n,p}$ is $\Theta_{\varepsilon}(pn)$, which improves upon a recent result by Molnar, R\"odl, Sales and Schacht. Inspired by the work of Bennett and Bohman, our approach centres on analysing a random greedy process that builds an independent set of size $\Omega(p^{-1}\log pn)$ by iteratively selecting vertices uniformly at random from the common non-neighbourhood of those already chosen. Using the differential equation method, we show that every non-edge is essentially equally likely to be covered by this process, which is key to establishing our bound.