Structure and enumeration theorems for hereditary properties in finite relational languages (Q1706268)

This article develops a general framework for approximate enumeration and structure results of finite structures. It is done within the context of a hereditary property and a finite relational language (in the sense of first-order logic), where a hereditary property is a class of finite structures which is closed under isomorphisms and substructures (e.g. induced subgraphs). Besides showing that a generalization can be made within a much wider context than (hyper)graph theory, the results of this article are likely to be useful for understanding logical zero-one laws. Approximate enumeration and structure results in (hyper)graph theory tend to follow a pattern in which certain standard tools are used. The tools include extremal results, stability theorems, supersaturation results and the hypergraph containers theorem. The author generalizes the concepts involved in such results to any finite relational language and provides the corresponding results in this context. More precisely, given a hereditary property H (in any finite relational language with maximal arity at least 2), she proves: (a) that the so-called asymptotic density of H exists, (b) an asymptotic enumeration result for H in which the asymptotic density of H has a key role, (c) that if H has a stability theorem then there is an approximate structure theorem for H, (d) a supersaturation result for H, and (e) a generalization of the hypergraph containers theorem. (Similar results have been proved independently by \textit{V. Falgas-Ravry} et al. in the context of multicoloured graphs and hypergraphs [``Multicolour containers and the entropy of graph limits'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1607.08152}].