On the volume of flowers in space forms (Q5948675)

Two sets of \(N\) congruent balls \(B_1,..., B_N\) and \(B_1',..., B_N'\) with centres \(x_1,..., x_N\) and \(x_1',..., x_N'\) with the property \(d(x_i,x_j) \leq d(x_i', x_j')\) for \( i < j \) are regarded. The Hadwiger-Kneser-Poulsen conjecture presumes that the union sets have volumes providing: \(V(\mathbb{C} C B_i) \leq V(\mathbb{C} C B'_i)\). This seemingly simple statement has already been the subject of a whole host of papers by various authors. Although the conjecture is still an open problem in its general form, it has been proven and even generalized under quite some additional asumptions. Results by M. Gromov (1987) and B. Csikós (1998) did not only deal with unions of balls, but also with consecutive intersections or unions of balls named `flowers'. Under certain preconditions the conjecture holds in \(n\)-dimensional Euclidean space. The present paper extends some of these results to the hyperbolic, Euclidean or spherical space. The additional precondition is that there has to be a special continuous motion mapping the balls of the first set into those of the second set.