The on-line Heilbronn's triangle problem (Q1827762)

The author considers the problem of positioning \(n\) points in the \(d\)-dimensional unit cube so that every subset of \(d+1\) points defines a simplex whose volume is at least some quantity; the goal of this construction is maximizing this quantity. The problem is related with Heilbronn's (off-line) triangle problem, but the difference is that in Heilbronn's problem the \(n\) points are given in advance. The version that the author considers was solved in the planar case by Schmidt in 1971. In this paper -- by means of nested packing arguments -- both an improvement of an already known lower bound in dimension \(3\) and a lower bound in dimension 4 (there was no lower bound known in this case) are obtained. The author provides an incremental construction, starting from a subset \(S_v\) of \(v\) points (for \(v<n\)) satisfying the assumptions. Those \(v\) points define certain ``forbidden'' portions in which no new point can be positioned. Then summing up the volumes of the ``forbidden'' portions it turns out that this volume is strictly smaller than \(1\), so a new point \(p\) can be added obtaining then another subset \(S_{v+1}\) of \(v+1\) points. It is possible to continue in this manner until the set of \(n\) points is completely constructed.