Cages of small length holding convex bodies (Q2207600)

A cage \(G\), defined as the \(1\)-skeleton of a convex polytope in \(3\)-space, holds a compact set \(K\) if \(G\) cannot move away without meeting the relative interior of \(K\). The authors consider in this paper the infimum of the lengths of cages holding various compact convex sets. First, geometric graphs and Steiner trees are investigated. Then, the notion of points almost fixing a convex body in the plane is introduced and studied. The last two sections treat cages holding \(2\)-dimensional compact convex sets, respectively the regular tetrahedron. The paper uses the following function \[f (v_1, \ldots , v_n) = p(v_1, \ldots , v_n) + S(v_1, \ldots , v_n)\] where \(p(v_1, \ldots , v_n) =\sum_{i=1}^{n} |v_i v_{i+1}|\) with \(v_{i+1}=v_1\) and \(S(v_1, \ldots , v_n)\) denote the length of the shortest connected rectifiable set containing all \(n\) points, called their Steiner tree. The main theorem of the paper is. Theorem. Let \(G\) be a cage and \(P\) some plane in \(\mathbb{R}^3\). If \(v_1, \ldots, v_n\) are the external vertices of the geometric graph \((G, \pi_P)\) in the plane \(P\) such that \(\pi_P(v_1), \ldots , \pi_P(v_n)\) lie in this order on boundary of the convex hull of \(\pi_P(G)\), then \[\lambda G \ge f \left(\pi_P(v_1), \ldots , \pi_P(v_n)\right)\] where \(\lambda G\) is the length of \(G\). Let \(\mathcal{G}(K)\) be the space of all cages in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) holding the compact set \(K\) and let \[L(K)=\inf\limits_{G\in\mathcal{G}(K)}\lambda G\] where \(\lambda G\) is the length of \(G\). Let \(\mathcal{B}_2\) be the unit circle, \(\mathcal{T}_d\) be the \(d\)-dimensional regular simplex of unit edge length and \(\mathcal{C}_d\) be the \(d\)-dimensional cube of unit edge length. The authors prove with the help of the theorem that \(L(\mathcal{B}_2)=6\), \(L(\mathcal{T}_2)=3\sqrt{\frac{3}{2}}\), \(L(\mathcal{T}_3)=3\) and \(L(\mathcal{C}_2)=6\).