Metric inequalities for polygons

Let $A_1,A_2,...,A_n$ be the vertices of a polygon with unit perimeter, that is $\sum_{i=1}^n |A_i A_{i+1}|=1$. We derive various tight estimates on the minimum and maximum values of the sum of pairwise distances, and respectively sum of pairwise squared distances among its vertices. In most cases such estimates on these sums in the literature were known only for convex polygons. In the second part, we turn to a problem of Bra\ss\ regarding the maximum perimeter of a simple $n$-gon ($n$ odd) contained in a disk of unit radius. The problem was solved by Audet et al. \cite{AHM09b}, who gave an exact formula. Here we present an alternative simpler proof of this formula. We then examine what happens if the simplicity condition is dropped, and obtain an exact formula for the maximum perimeter in this case as well.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures. This version replaces the previous version from 8 Feb 2011. A new section has been added and the material has been reorganized; a correction has been done in the proof of Lemma 4 (analysis of Case 3

Approximate Euclidean Ramsey theorems

According to a classical result of Szemer\'{e}di, every dense subset of $1,2,...,N$ contains an arbitrary long arithmetic progression, if $N$ is large enough. Its analogue in higher dimensions due to F\"urstenberg and Katznelson says that every dense subset of $\{1,2,...,N\}^d$ contains an arbitrary large grid, if $N$ is large enough. Here we generalize these results for separated point sets on the line and respectively in the Euclidean space: (i) every dense separated set of points in some interval $[0,L]$ on the line contains an arbitrary long approximate arithmetic progression, if $L$ is large enough. (ii) every dense separated set of points in the $d$-dimensional cube $[0,L]^d$ in \RR^d contains an arbitrary large approximate grid, if $L$ is large enough. A further generalization for any finite pattern in \RR^d is also established. The separation condition is shown to be necessary for such results to hold. In the end we show that every sufficiently large point set in \RR^d contains an arbitrarily large subset of almost collinear points. No separation condition is needed in this case.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure

The opaque square

The problem of finding small sets that block every line passing through a unit square was first considered by Mazurkiewicz in 1916. We call such a set {\em opaque} or a {\em barrier} for the square. The shortest known barrier has length $\sqrt{2}+ \frac{\sqrt{6}}{2}= 2.6389\ldots$. The current best lower bound for the length of a (not necessarily connected) barrier is $2$, as established by Jones about 50 years ago. No better lower bound is known even if the barrier is restricted to lie in the square or in its close vicinity. Under a suitable locality assumption, we replace this lower bound by $2+10^{-12}$, which represents the first, albeit small, step in a long time toward finding the length of the shortest barrier. A sharper bound is obtained for interior barriers: the length of any interior barrier for the unit square is at least $2 + 10^{-5}$. Two of the key elements in our proofs are: (i) formulas established by Sylvester for the measure of all lines that meet two disjoint planar convex bodies, and (ii) a procedure for detecting lines that are witness to the invalidity of a short bogus barrier for the square.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figure

Sweeping an oval to a vanishing point

Given a convex region in the plane, and a sweep-line as a tool, what is best way to reduce the region to a single point by a sequence of sweeps? The problem of sweeping points by orthogonal sweeps was first studied in [2]. Here we consider the following \emph{slanted} variant of sweeping recently introduced in [1]: In a single sweep, the sweep-line is placed at a start position somewhere in the plane, then moved continuously according to a sweep vector $\vec v$ (not necessarily orthogonal to the sweep-line) to another parallel end position, and then lifted from the plane. The cost of a sequence of sweeps is the sum of the lengths of the sweep vectors. The (optimal) sweeping cost of a region is the infimum of the costs over all finite sweeping sequences for that region. An optimal sweeping sequence for a region is one with a minimum total cost, if it exists. Another parameter of interest is the number of sweeps. We show that there exist convex regions for which the optimal sweeping cost cannot be attained by two sweeps. This disproves a conjecture of Bousany, Karker, O'Rourke, and Sparaco stating that two sweeps (with vectors along the two adjacent sides of a minimum-perimeter enclosing parallelogram) always suffice [1]. Moreover, we conjecture that for some convex regions, no finite sweeping sequence is optimal. On the other hand, we show that both the 2-sweep algorithm based on minimum-perimeter enclosing rectangle and the 2-sweep algorithm based on minimum-perimeter enclosing parallelogram achieve a $4/\pi \approx 1.27$ approximation in this sweeping model.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure