Art gallery theorems for guarded guards. (Q1410595)

The authors prove two art gallery theorems in which the guards guarding the gallery also guard one another (protecting against the ambush or untrustworthiness of an isolated guard). In the paper a simple closed, \(n\)-sided polygon with its interior included is denoted by \(P_n\). A point \(x\) in \(P_n\) is called visible from a point \(w\) if the line segment \(wx\) does not intersect the exterior of \(P_n\). The set of points \(\mathcal{G}\) is a guard set for \(P_n\) if for every point \(x\) in \(P_n\) there exists a point \(w\) in \(\mathcal{G}\) such that \(x\) is visible from \(w\). \(g(P_n)\) denotes the minimum cardinality of \(\mathcal{G}\) for \(P_n\). \(g(m)\) and \(g_{\bot }(m)\) are two functions defined as follows for \(n\geq3\), \(g(n)=\max\{g(P_n):P_n\) is a polygon with \(n\) sides\(\}\) and for \(n\geq4\), \(gg_{\bot }(n)=\max \{gg(P_n):P_n\) is an orthogonal polygon with \(n\) sides\(\}\). A set of points \(\mathcal{G}\) is a guarded guard set for \(P_n\) provided that (i) \(\mathcal{G}\) is a guard set for \(P_n\) and (ii) for every point \(w\) in \(\mathcal{G}\) there exists a point \(v\) in \(\mathcal{G}\) with \(v\neq w\) such that \(w\) is visible from \(v\). Let \(gg(P_n)\) denote the minimum cardinality of a guarded guard set for the polygon \(P_n\). Define \(gg(n)=\max\{gg(P_n):P_n\) is a polygon with \(n\) sides\(\}\) and for even \(n\geq 4\), \(gg_{\bot }(n)=\max \{gg(P_n):P_n\) is an orthogonal polygon with \(n\) sides\(\}\). The authors prove, for \(n\geq 5\), \(gg(n)=\lfloor \frac{3n-1}{7}\rfloor \) and, for \(n\geq 6\), \(gg_{\bot }(n)=\lfloor \frac{n}{3}\rfloor \).