Double-normal pairs in the plane and on the sphere

Abstract: A double-normal pair of a finite set

S

of points from Euclidean space is a pair of points

p, q

from

S

such that

S

lies in the closed strip bounded by the hyperplanes through

p

and

q

that are perpendicular to

p q

. A double-normal pair

p q

is strict if

S s e t m i n u s p, q

lies in the open strip. We answer a question of Martini and Soltan (2006) by showing that a set of

n g e q 3

points in the plane has at most

3 l f l o o r n / 2 f l o o r

double-normal pairs. This bound is sharp for each

n g e q 3

. In a companion paper, we have asymptotically determined this maximum for points in

R^{3}

. Here we show that if the set lies on some 2-sphere, it has at most

17 n / 4 - 6

double-normal pairs. This bound is attained for infinitely many values of

n

. We also establish tight bounds for the maximum number of strict double-normal pairs in a set of

n

points in the plane and on the sphere.

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