English

Distribution of boundary points of expansion and application to the lonely runner conjecture

Combinatorics 2026-03-12 v4 Number Theory

Abstract

In this paper, we study the distribution of the boundary points of expansion. As an application, we say something about the lonely runner problem. We show that given kk runners Si\mathcal{S}_i round a unit circular track with the condition that at some time SiSi+1=Si+1Si+2||\mathcal{S}_i-\mathcal{S}_{i+1}||=||\mathcal{S}_{i+1}-\mathcal{S}_{i+2}|| for all i=1,2,k2i=1,2\ldots,k-2, then at that time we have Si+1Si>D(n)πk1 ||\mathcal{S}_{i+1}-\mathcal{S}_i||>\frac{\mathcal{D}(n)\pi}{k-1} for all i=1,,k1i=1,\ldots,k-1 and where 1>D(n)>01>\mathcal{D}(n)>0 is a constant depending on the degree of a certain polynomial of degree nn. In particular, we show that given at most eight Si\mathcal{S}_i~(i=1,2,,8i=1,2,\ldots, 8) runners running around a unit circular track with distinct constant speed and the additional condition SiSi+1=Si+1Si+2||\mathcal{S}_i-\mathcal{S}_{i+1}||=||\mathcal{S}_{i+1}-\mathcal{S}_{i+2}|| for all 1i61\leq i\leq 6 at some time s>1s>1, then at that time their mutual distance must satisfy the lower bound SiSi+1>Cπ7 ||\mathcal{S}_{i}-\mathcal{S}_{i+1}||>\frac{C\pi}{7} for some constant 1>C>01>C>0 for all 1i71\leq i\leq 7.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1908.02153,
  title  = {Distribution of boundary points of expansion and application to the lonely runner conjecture},
  author = {Theophilus Agama},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.02153},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

12 pages; the paper has been reformatted and introduction greatly expanded; ideas remain unchanged