Two extensions of the Erdős-Szekeres problem (Q2216751)

Some \(n\) points in the plane are said to be in general position if no three of them are collinear. A well-known conjecture of \textit{P. Erdős} and \textit{G. Szekeres} [Compos. Math. 2, 463--470 (1935; Zbl 0012.27010)] asserts that among \(2^{n-2}+1\) points in general position in the plane, some \(n\) points are in convex position. A recent breakthrough result of \textit{A. Suk} [J. Amer. Math. Soc. 30, 1047--1053 (2017; Zbl 1370.52032)] came close to proving this conjecture by showing that among \(2^{n+O(n^{2/3}\log n)}\) points in general position in the plane, some \(n\) points are in convex position. \textit{T. Bisztriczky} and \textit{G. Fejes Tóth} [J. Reine Angew. Math. 395, 167--170 (1989; Zbl 0654.52003); Geom. Dedicata 31, 89--104 (1989; Zbl 0677.52003)] gave a seemingly unrelated generalization of the Erdős-Szekeres conjecture by replacing point sets with families of pairwise disjoint convex bodies. They defined \(n\) convex bodies to be in convex position if the convex hull of no \(n-1\) of them contains the remaining one. If any three members of a family of convex bodies are in convex position, then the family is in general position. Bisztriczky and Fejes Tóth proved that for any \(n\geq 3\), there exists a smallest integer \(c(n)\) with the following property. If \(\mathcal F\) is a family of pairwise disjoint convex bodies in general position in the plane with \(|{\mathcal F}|\geq c(n)\), then it has \(n\) members in convex position. They conjectured that the \(c(n)\) threshold is the same as the threshold for the Erdős-Szekeres conjecture. They extended the statement to families of pairwise noncrossing convex bodies, that is, to convex bodies that may intersect, but any pair can share at most two boundary points with a threshold \(c'(n)\). The paper under review improves the error term in the exponent of Suk's result to \(2^{n+O(\sqrt{n\log n})}\), and shows that this bound also applies to the problems of Bisztriczky and Fejes Tóth by showing \(c(n)\leq c'(n)\leq 2^{n+O(\sqrt{n\log n})}\). Their techniques use pseudolines and pseudoconfigurations, and a result of \textit{M.G. Dobbins} et al. [Mathematika 60, 463--484 (2014; Zbl 1298.52019)].