124 research outputs found
Improved bounds for Hadwiger's covering problem via thin-shell estimates
A central problem in discrete geometry, known as Hadwiger's covering problem,
asks what the smallest natural number is such that every
convex body in can be covered by a union of the interiors of
at most of its translates. Despite continuous efforts, the
best general upper bound known for this number remains as it was more than
sixty years ago, of the order of .
In this note, we improve this bound by a sub-exponential factor. That is, we
prove a bound of the order of for some universal
constant .
Our approach combines ideas from previous work by Artstein-Avidan and the
second named author with tools from Asymptotic Geometric Analysis. One of the
key steps is proving a new lower bound for the maximum volume of the
intersection of a convex body with a translate of ; in fact, we get the
same lower bound for the volume of the intersection of and when they
both have barycenter at the origin. To do so, we make use of measure
concentration, and in particular of thin-shell estimates for isotropic
log-concave measures.
Using the same ideas, we establish an exponentially better bound for
when restricting our attention to convex bodies that are
. By a slightly different approach, an exponential improvement is
established also for classes of convex bodies with positive modulus of
convexity
The unrestricted blocking number in convex geometry
Let K be a convex body in \mathbb{R}^n. We say that a set of translates \left \{ K + \underline{u}_i \right \}_{i=1}^{p} block K if any other translate of K which touches K, overlaps one of K + \underline{u}_i, i = 1, . . . , p. The smallest number of non-overlapping translates (i.e. whose interiors are disjoint) of K, all of which touch K at its boundary and which block any other translate of K from touching K is called the Blocking Number of K and denote it by B(K).
This thesis explores the properties of the blocking number in general but the main
purpose is to study the unrestricted blocking number B_\alpha(K), i.e., when K is blocked by translates of \alpha K, where \alpha is a fixed positive number and when the restrictions that the translates are non-overlapping or touch K are removed. We call this number the Unrestricted Blocking Number and denote it by B_\alpha(K).
The original motivation for blocking number is the following famous problem:
Can a rigid material sphere be brought into contact with 13 other such spheres of the same size?
This problem was posed by Kepler in 1611. Although this problem was raised by Kepler, it is named after Newton since Newton and Gregory had a dispute over the solution which was eventually settled in Newtonâs favour. It is called the Newton Number, N(K) of K and is defined to be the maximum number of non-overlapping translates of K which can touch K at its boundary. The well-known dispute between Sir Isaac Newton and David Gregory concerning this problem, which Newton conjectured to be 12, and Gregory thought to be 13, was ended 180 years later. In 1874, the problem was solved by Hoppe in favour of Newton, i.e., N(\beta^3) = 12. In his proof, the arrangement of 12 unit balls is not unique. This is thought to explain why the problem took 180 years to solve although it is a very natural and a very simple sounding problem. As a generalization of the Newton Number to other convex bodies the blocking number was
introduced by C. Zong in 1993.
âAnother characteristic of mathematical thought is that it can have no
success where it cannot generalize.â
C. S. Pierce
As quoted above, in mathematics generalizations play a very important part. In this thesis we generalize the blocking number to the Unrestricted Blocking Number. Furthermore; we also define the Blocking Number with negative copies and denote it by B_(K). The blocking number not only gives rise to a wide variety of generalizations but also it has interesting observations in nature. For instance, there is a direct relation to the distribution of holes on the surface of pollen grains with the unrestricted blocking number
Asymptotics of generalized Hadwiger numbers
We give asymptotic estimates for the number of non-overlapping homothetic
copies of some centrally symmetric oval which have a common point with a
2-dimensional domain having rectifiable boundary, extending previous work
of the L.Fejes-Toth, K.Borockzy Jr., D.G.Larman, S.Sezgin, C.Zong and the
authors. The asymptotics compute the length of the boundary in the
Minkowski metric determined by . The core of the proof consists of a method
for sliding convex beads along curves with positive reach in the Minkowski
plane. We also prove that level sets are rectifiable subsets, extending a
theorem of Erd\"os, Oleksiv and Pesin for the Euclidean space to the Minkowski
space.Comment: 20p, 9 figure
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