On Zarankiewicz Problem and Depth-Two Superconcentrators

Abstract: We show tight necessary and sufficient conditions on the sizes of small bipartite graphs whose union is a larger bipartite graph that has no large bipartite independent set. Our main result is a common generalization of two classical results in graph theory: the theorem of K\H{o}v\'{a}ri, S\'{o}s and Tur\'{a}n on the minimum number of edges in a bipartite graph that has no large independent set, and the theorem of Hansel (also Katona and Szemer\'{e}di, Krichevskii) on the sum of the sizes of bipartite graphs that can be used to construct a graph (non-necessarily bipartite) that has no large independent set. As an application of our results, we show how they unify the underlying combinatorial principles developed in the proof of tight lower bounds for depth-two superconcentrators.