English

Improved Bound for the Gerver-Ramsey Collinearity Problem

Combinatorics 2023-04-11 v2 Formal Languages and Automata Theory

Abstract

Let SS be a finite subset of Zn\mathbb{Z}^n. A vector sequence (zi)(\mathbf{z}_i) is an SS-walk if and only if zi+1zi\mathbf{z}_{i+1} - \mathbf{z}_i is an element of SS for all ii. Gerver and Ramsey showed in 1979 that for SZ3S\subset \mathbb{Z}^3 there exists an infinite SS-walk in which no 511+1=48,828,1265^{11} + 1=48{\small,}828{\small,}126 points are collinear. Here, we use the same general approach, but with the aid of a computer search, to improve the bound to 189189.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2303.14579,
  title  = {Improved Bound for the Gerver-Ramsey Collinearity Problem},
  author = {Thomas F. Lidbetter},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.14579},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

22 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-28T09:33:48.051Z