Hereditary properties of tournaments (Q1010619)

Summary: A collection of unlabelled tournaments \({\mathcal P}\) is called a hereditary property if it is closed under isomorphism and under taking induced sub-tournaments. The speed of \({\mathcal P}\) is the function \(n \mapsto |{\mathcal P}_n|\), where \({\mathcal P}_n = \{T \in {\mathcal P} : |V(T)| = n\}\). In this paper, we prove that there is a jump in the possible speeds of a hereditary property of tournaments, from polynomial to exponential speed. Moreover, we determine the minimal exponential speed, \(|{\mathcal P}_n| = c^{(1+o(1))n}\), where \(c \simeq 1.47\) is the largest real root of the polynomial \(x^3 = x^2 + 1\), and the unique hereditary property with this speed.