Small maximally disjoint union-free families (Q941357)

This tidy paper studies the minimum possible cardinality of maximally \textit{disjoint union-free} (or DUF for short) \(k\)-graphs: a \(k\)-uniform hypergraph is DUF, if all disjoint pairs of \(k\)-edges have distinct unions. Maximally DUF means that the hypergraph is saturated for property DUF: adding one new \(k\)-edge to the hypergraph would destroy the property. The quantity \(\phi(n)\) denotes the minimum size of maximally DUF \(k\)-graph on an \(n\)-element underlying set. The papers deals with the case \(k=3.\) It is shown that number \(\phi(n)\) is not strictly increasing for \(n \geq 3\). Furthermore --- using the classical Mantel's theorem --- the lower bound \(\phi(n) \geq n^2/12 -n/6\) is proved. The paper constructs small size maximally DUF \(3\)-graphs for infinitely many \(n\) which proves that \(\phi(n)\leq n^2/12 = O(n).\)