On union-closed families with prescribed number of $k$-sets

Source abstract

Fix positive integers $N,k,n$ with $n\ge k$. We seek the minimum number of members of size at least $n$ in a finite family of finite sets closed under union and containing exactly $N$ distinct sets of size $k$. This problem is a specialization of the Leck--Roberts--Simpson weighted conjecture: assign weight one to sets of size at least $n$ and zero to smaller sets. The predicted minimizer consists of the unions of nonempty subfamilies of the first $N$ $k$-subsets of the natural numbers, ordered by their largest elements and, when these agree, by their increasing lists lexicographically. For an integer $t\ge 1$, call the range \[ \binom{n+t-1}{k} \frac{5}{2} k^2t$. For sufficiently large$k$, we obtain a sufficient bound of order$k^2t/\log k$, uniformly in$t\ge2$.