Geometric permutations of higher dimensional spheres (Q1883581)
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English | Geometric permutations of higher dimensional spheres |
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Geometric permutations of higher dimensional spheres (English)
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13 October 2004
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Given a set \(A\) of pairwise convex objects in \(R^d\), a line \(\ell\) that intersects every object in \(A\) is said to be a {line transversal} of \(A\). Such a transversal defines two linear orders of the objects in \(A\) along \(\ell\) (from both directions); these two orders count as one {geometric permutation}. Studying the maximum number of different geometric permutations a set of objects may have is a problem that has received much attention, and only in \(R^2\) is completely settled. In this paper the authors give tight results for sets of spheres with bounded radius ratio in \(R^d\), \(d\geq 3\). As a particular case, they show that the maximum number of geometric permutations of \(n\) congruent spheres in \(R^d\), \(d\geq 3\), is at most \(4\), matching an independently discovered upper bound for this case by \textit{Y. Zhou} and \textit{S. Suri} [Comput. Geom. 26, No. 1, 3--20 (2003; Zbl 1039.52013)].
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line transversal
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geometric permutation
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Helly-type theorems
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upper bound
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sphere
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