Sieve methods in combinatorics

Abstract

We develop the Turán sieve and a ‘simple sieve’ in the context of bipartite graphs and apply them to various problems in combinatorics. More precisely, we provide applications in the cases of characters of abelian groups, vertex-colourings of graphs, Latin squares, connected graphs, and generators of groups. In addition, we give a spectral interpretation of the Turán sieve.