Obstacles for splitting multidimensional necklaces

Publication date 8 September 2015

Abstract: The well-known "necklace splitting theorem" of Alon asserts that every

k

-colored necklace can be fairly split into

q

parts using at most

t

cuts, provided

k (q - 1) l e q t

. In a joint paper with Alon et al. we studied a kind of opposite question. Namely, for which values of

k

and

t

there is a measurable

k

-coloring of the real line such that no interval has a fair splitting into

2

parts with at most

t

cuts? We proved that

k > t + 2

is a sufficient condition (while

k > t

is necessary). We generalize this result to Euclidean spaces of arbitrary dimension

d

, and to arbitrary number of parts

q

. We prove that if

k (q - 1) > t + d + q - 1

, then there is a measurable

k

-coloring of

m a t h b b R^{d}

such that no axis-aligned cube has a fair

q

-splitting using at most

t

axis-aligned hyperplane cuts. Our bound is of the same order as a necessary condition

k (q - 1) > t

implied by a theorem of Alon. Moreover for

d = 1, q = 2

we get exactly the result of of Alon et al. Additionally, we prove that if a stronger inequality

k (q - 1) > d t + d + q - 1

is satisfied, then there is a measurable

k

-coloring of

m a t h b b R^{d}

with no axis-aligned cube having a fair

q

-splitting using at most

t

arbitrary hyperplane cuts. The proofs are based on the topological Baire category theorem and use algebraic independence over suitably chosen fields.

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