A note on covering edge colored hypergraphs by monochromatic components (Q405234)

Summary: For \(r\geq 2\), \(\alpha \geq r-1\) and \(k\geq 1\), let \(c(r,\alpha ,k)\) be the smallest integer \(c\) such that the vertex set of any non-trivial \(r\)-uniform \(k\)-edge-colored hypergraph \({\mathcal H}\) with \(\alpha ({\mathcal H})=\alpha\) can be covered by \(c\) monochromatic connected components. Here \(\alpha({\mathcal{H}})\) is the maximum cardinality of a subset \(A\) of vertices in \(\mathcal{H}\) such that \(A\) does not contain any edges. An old conjecture of Ryser is equivalent to \(c(2,\alpha,k)=\alpha (r-1)\) and a recent result of \textit{Z. Király} [Eur. J. Comb. 35, 374--376 (2014; Zbl 1292.05202)] states that \(c(r,r-1,k)=\lceil \frac{k}{r}\rceil\) for any \(r\geq 3\).{ }Here we make the first step to treat non-complete hypergraphs, showing that \(c(r,r,r)=2\) for \(r\geq 2\) and \(c(r,r,r+1)=3\) for \(r\geq 3\).