Abstract: Given -uniform hypergraphs (-graphs) and , where is a spanning subgraph of , is called weakly -saturated in if the edges in admit an ordering so that for all the hypergraph contains an isomorphic copy of which in turn contains the edge . The weak saturation number of in is the smallest size of an -weakly saturated subgraph of . Weak saturation was introduced by Bollob'as in 1968, but despite decades of study our understanding of it is still limited. The main difficulty lies in proving lower bounds on weak saturation numbers, which typically withstands combinatorial methods and requires arguments of algebraic or geometrical nature. In our main contribution in this paper we determine exactly the weak saturation number of complete multipartite -graphs in the directed setting, for any choice of parameters. This generalizes a theorem of Alon from 1985. Our proof combines the exterior algebra approach from the works of Kalai with the use of the colorful exterior algebra motivated by the recent work of Bulavka, Goodarzi and Tancer on the colorful fractional Helly theorem. In our second contribution answering a question of Kronenberg, Martins and Morrison, we establish a link between weak saturation numbers of bipartite graphs in the clique versus in a complete bipartite host graph. In a similar fashion we asymptotically determine the weak saturation number of any complete -partite -graph in the clique, generalizing another result of Kronenberg et al.
Let \(F\) and \(H\) be \(q\)-uniform hypergraphs. A subgraph \(G \subseteq F\) is \textit{weakly \(H\)-saturated} in \(F\) if the edges of \(F \setminus G\) can be ordered as \(e_1, \dots , e_k\) such that for each \(i \in [k]\), the hypergraph \(G \cup {e_1, \dots , e_i}\) contains an isomorphic copy of \(H\) containing the edge \(e_i\). The \textit{weak saturation number} of \(H\) in \(F\), denoted wsat\((F,H)\), is the minimum number of edges in a weakly \(H\)-saturated subgraph of \(F\).\par The main contribution of the paper is the exact determination of the weak saturation number of complete multipartite \(q\)-graphs in the directed setting, generalizing a theorem by \textit{N. Alon} [J. Comb. Theory, Ser. A 40, 82--89 (1985; Zbl 0578.05002)]. Additionally, the authors establish a link between weak saturation numbers of bipartite graphs in the clique and in a complete bipartite host graph, thereby answerign a question posed by \textit{G. Kronenberg} et al. [J. Comb. Theory, Ser. A 178, Article ID 105357, 16 p. (2021; Zbl 1457.05089)].
