On the chromatic number of simple triangle-free triple systems (Q1010856)

Summary: A hypergraph is simple if every two edges share at most one vertex. It is triangle-free if in addition every three pairwise intersecting edges have a vertex in common. We prove that there is an absolute constant \(c\) such that the chromatic number of a simple triangle-free triple system with maximum degree \(\Delta\) is at most \(c\sqrt{\Delta/\log \Delta}\). This extends a result of Johansson about graphs, and is sharp apart from the constant \(c\).