Chromatic number of spacetime
Abstract
We observe that an old theorem of Graham implies that for any positive integer , there exists some positive integer such that every -colouring of contains a monochromatic pair of points with . By scaling, this implies that every finite colouring of contains a monochromatic pair of points with , which answers in a strong sense a problem of Kosheleva and Kreinovich on a pseudo-Euclidean analogue of the Hadwiger-Nelson problem. The proof of Graham's theorem relies on repeated applications of van der Waerden's theorem, and so the resulting function grows extremely quickly. We give an alternative proof in the weaker setting of having a second spacial dimension that results in a significantly improved bound. To be more precise, we prove that for every positive integer with , every -colouring of contains a monochromatic pair of points such that . In fact, we prove a stronger density version. The density version in remains open.
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Cite
@article{arxiv.2308.16885,
title = {Chromatic number of spacetime},
author = {James Davies},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.16885},
year = {2024}
}
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8 pages