272,319 research outputs found
Coloring translates and homothets of a convex body
We obtain improved upper bounds and new lower bounds on the chromatic number
as a linear function of the clique number, for the intersection graphs (and
their complements) of finite families of translates and homothets of a convex
body in \RR^n.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure
A lower bound for the height of a rational function at -unit points
Let be a finitely generated subgroup of the multiplicative group
\G_m^2(\bar{Q}). Let p(X,Y),q(X,Y)\in\bat{Q} be two coprime polynomials not
both vanishing at ; let . We prove that, for all
outside a proper Zariski closed subset of , the height
of verifies . As a consequence, we deduce upper bounds for (a generalized
notion of) the g.c.d. of for running over .Comment: Plain TeX 18 pages. Version 2; minor changes. To appear on
Monatshefte fuer Mathemati
On covering by translates of a set
In this paper we study the minimal number of translates of an arbitrary
subset of a group needed to cover the group, and related notions of the
efficiency of such coverings. We focus mainly on finite subsets in discrete
groups, reviewing the classical results in this area, and generalizing them to
a much broader context. For example, we show that while the worst-case
efficiency when has elements is of order , for fixed and
large, almost every -subset of any given -element group covers
with close to optimal efficiency.Comment: 41 pages; minor corrections; to appear in Random Structures and
Algorithm
Highly saturated packings and reduced coverings
We introduce and study certain notions which might serve as substitutes for
maximum density packings and minimum density coverings. A body is a compact
connected set which is the closure of its interior. A packing with
congruent replicas of a body is -saturated if no members of it can
be replaced with replicas of , and it is completely saturated if it is
-saturated for each . Similarly, a covering with congruent
replicas of a body is -reduced if no members of it can be replaced
by replicas of without uncovering a portion of the space, and it is
completely reduced if it is -reduced for each . We prove that every
body in -dimensional Euclidean or hyperbolic space admits both an
-saturated packing and an -reduced covering with replicas of . Under
some assumptions on (somewhat weaker than convexity),
we prove the existence of completely saturated packings and completely reduced
coverings, but in general, the problem of existence of completely saturated
packings and completely reduced coverings remains unsolved. Also, we
investigate some problems related to the the densities of -saturated
packings and -reduced coverings. Among other things, we prove that there
exists an upper bound for the density of a -reduced covering of
with congruent balls, and we produce some density bounds for the
-saturated packings and -reduced coverings of the plane with congruent
circles
Unsplittable coverings in the plane
A system of sets forms an {\em -fold covering} of a set if every point
of belongs to at least of its members. A -fold covering is called a
{\em covering}. The problem of splitting multiple coverings into several
coverings was motivated by classical density estimates for {\em sphere
packings} as well as by the {\em planar sensor cover problem}. It has been the
prevailing conjecture for 35 years (settled in many special cases) that for
every plane convex body , there exists a constant such that every
-fold covering of the plane with translates of splits into
coverings. In the present paper, it is proved that this conjecture is false for
the unit disk. The proof can be generalized to construct, for every , an
unsplittable -fold covering of the plane with translates of any open convex
body which has a smooth boundary with everywhere {\em positive curvature}.
Somewhat surprisingly, {\em unbounded} open convex sets do not misbehave,
they satisfy the conjecture: every -fold covering of any region of the plane
by translates of such a set splits into two coverings. To establish this
result, we prove a general coloring theorem for hypergraphs of a special type:
{\em shift-chains}. We also show that there is a constant such that, for
any positive integer , every -fold covering of a region with unit disks
splits into two coverings, provided that every point is covered by {\em at
most} sets
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