On the Richter–Thomassen Conjecture about Pairwise Intersecting Closed Curves

DOI10.1017/S0963548316000043MaRDI QIDQ5366928zbMATH OpenWikidataFDO

Authors János Pach, Natan Rubin, Gábor Tardos

Publication date 10 October 2017

Published in Combinatorics, Probability and Computing (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.6676

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Extremal problems in graph theory (05C35) Planar graphs; geometric and topological aspects of graph theory (05C10) Erd?s problems and related topics of discrete geometry (52C10) Planar arrangements of lines and pseudolines (aspects of discrete geometry) (52C30) Combinatorial complexity of geometric structures (52C45) Extremal combinatorics (05D99)

Abstract: A long standing conjecture of Richter and Thomassen states that the total number of intersection points between any $n$ simple closed Jordan curves in the plane, so that any pair of them intersect and no three curves pass through the same point, is at least $(1-o(1))n^2$. We confirm the above conjecture in several important cases, including the case (1) when all curves are convex, and (2) when the family of curves can be partitioned into two equal classes such that each curve from the first class is touching every curve from the second class. (Two curves are said to be touching if they have precisely one point in common, at which they do not properly cross.) An important ingredient of our proofs is the following statement: Let $S$ be a family of the graphs of $n$ continuous real functions defined on $mathbbR$, no three of which pass through the same point. If there are $nt$ pairs of touching curves in $S$, then the number of crossing points is $Omega(ntsqrtlogt/loglogt)$.

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Cited in

(4)

• Intersecting curves in the plane
• A crossing lemma for Jordan curves
• On the Richter-Thomassen conjecture about pairwise intersecting closed curves
• On the number of tangencies among 1-intersecting \(x\)-monotone curves

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