English

Bounds for Pach's selection theorem and for the minimum solid angle in a simplex

Metric Geometry 2015-10-20 v4 Combinatorics

Abstract

We estimate the selection constant in the following geometric selection theorem by Pach: For every positive integer dd there is a constant cd>0c_d > 0 such that whenever X1,...,Xd+1X_1,..., X_{d+1} are nn-element subsets of Rd\mathbb{R}^d, then we can find a point pRd\mathbf{p} \in \mathbb{R}^d and subsets YiXiY_i \subseteq X_i for every i[d+1]i \in [d+1], each of size at least cdnc_d n, such that p\mathbf{p} belongs to all {\em rainbow} dd-simplices determined by Y1,...,Yd+1Y_1,..., Y_{d+1}, that is, simplices with one vertex in each YiY_i. We show a super-exponentially decreasing upper bound cde(1/2o(1))(dlnd)c_d\leq e^{-(1/2-o(1))(d \ln d)}. The ideas used in the proof of the upper bound also help us prove Pach's theorem with cd22d2+O(d)c_d \geq 2^{-2^{d^2 + O(d)}}, which is a lower bound doubly exponentially decreasing in dd (up to some polynomial in the exponent). For comparison, Pach's original approach yields a triply exponentially decreasing lower bound. On the other hand, Fox, Pach, and Suk recently obtained a hypergraph density result implying a proof of Pach's theorem with cd2O(d2logd)c_d \geq2^{-O(d^2\log d)}. In our construction for the upper bound, we use the fact that the minimum solid angle of every dd-simplex is super-exponentially small. This fact was previously unknown and might be of independent interest. For the lower bound, we improve the "separation" part of the argument by showing that in one of the key steps only d+1d+1 separations are necessary, compared to 2d2^d separations in the original proof. We also provide a measure version of Pach's theorem.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1403.8147,
  title  = {Bounds for Pach's selection theorem and for the minimum solid angle in a simplex},
  author = {Roman Karasev and Jan Kynčl and Pavel Paták and Zuzana Patáková and Martin Tancer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1403.8147},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

26 pages, 12 figures, correcting the surname of one of the authors in metadata (and the number of figures), no changes in the text of the manuscript

R2 v1 2026-06-22T03:39:31.389Z