English

Gravitational allocation for uniform points on the sphere

Probability 2019-02-28 v2

Abstract

Given a collection L\mathcal L of nn points on a sphere Sn2\mathbf{S}^2_n of surface area nn, a fair allocation is a partition of the sphere into nn parts each of area 11, and each associated with a distinct point of L\mathcal L. We show that if the nn points are chosen uniformly at random and the partition is defined by considering the gravitational field defined by the nn points, then the expected distance between a point on the sphere and the associated point of L\mathcal L is O(logn)O(\sqrt{\log n}). We use our result to define a matching between two collections of nn independent and uniform points on the sphere, and prove that the expected distance between a pair of matched points is O(logn)O(\sqrt{\log n}), which is optimal by a result of Ajtai, Koml\'os, and Tusn\'ady.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1704.08238,
  title  = {Gravitational allocation for uniform points on the sphere},
  author = {Nina Holden and Yuval Peres and Alex Zhai},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1704.08238},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

26 pages, 5 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T19:28:47.804Z