Pursuit evasion on polyhedral surfaces (Q5963379)

The authors consider a discrete-time pursuit-evasion game played on the surface of a 3-dimensional polyhedron. Play alternates between a team of pursuers and a single evader. On the pursuers' turn, all pursuers may simultaneously move a distance of up to 1 on the surface; on the evader's turn, they may likewise move up to 1 unit away from their current location. The pursuers win if some pursuer has the same location as the evader at the end of a pursuer turn, while the evader wins by evading capture indefinitely. All players are aware of each others' locations at all times. The main question the authors are interested in is the number of pursuers required to guarantee that the pursuers win. The authors show that on some genus-0 surfaces, at least \(3\) pursuers may be required, and present a surface for which this is the case. They also show that \(4\) pursuers can catch the evader on any genus-\(0\) surface and, more generally, that \(4g+4\) pursuers can catch the evader on a surface of genus \(g\). They also give upper bounds on the number of moves required for the pursuers to achieve victory.