English

A Tree Sperner Lemma

Combinatorics 2013-07-10 v2 General Topology

Abstract

In this paper we prove a combinatorial theorem for finite labellings of trees, and show that it is equivalent to a theorem for finite covers of metric trees and a fixed point theorem on metric trees. We trace how these connections mimic the equivalence of the Brouwer fixed point theorem with the classical KKM lemma and Sperner's lemma. We also draw connections to a KKM-type theorem about infinite covers of metric trees and fixed point theorems for non-compact metric trees. Finally, we develop a new KKM-type theorem for cycles, and discuss interesting social consequences, including an application in voting theory.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0909.0339,
  title  = {A Tree Sperner Lemma},
  author = {Andrew Niedermaier and Douglas Rizzolo and Francis Edward Su},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0909.0339},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

18 pages, 4 figures. See also related work at http://www.math.hmc.edu/~su/papers.html

R2 v1 2026-06-21T13:41:30.727Z