English

Monochromatic configurations on a circle

Combinatorics 2025-04-29 v2 Number Theory

Abstract

If we two-colour a circle, we can always find an inscribed triangle with angles (π7,2π7,4π7)(\frac{\pi}{7},\frac{2\pi}{7},\frac{4\pi}{7}) whose three vertices have the same colour. In fact, Bialostocki and Nielsen showed that it is enough to consider the colours on the vertices of an inscribed heptagon. We prove that for every other triangle TT there is a two-colouring of the circle without any monochromatic copy of TT. More generally, for k3k\geq 3, call a kk-tuple (d1,d2,,dk)(d_1,d_2,\dots,d_k) with d1d2dk>0d_1\geq d_2\geq \dots \geq d_k>0 and i=1kdi=1\sum_{i=1}^k d_i=1 a Ramsey kk-tuple if the following is true: in every two-colouring of the circle of unit perimeter, there is a monochromatic kk-tuple of points in which the distances of cyclically consecutive points, measured along the arcs, are d1,d2,,dkd_1,d_2,\dots,d_k in some order. By a conjecture of Stromquist, if di=2ki2k1d_i=\frac{2^{k-i}}{2^k-1}, then (d1,,dk)(d_1,\dots,d_k) is Ramsey. Our main result is a proof of the converse of this conjecture. That is, we show that if (d1,,dk)(d_1,\dots,d_k) is Ramsey, then di=2ki2k1d_i=\frac{2^{k-i}}{2^k-1}. We do this by finding connections of the problem to certain questions from number theory about partitioning N\mathbb{N} into so-called Beatty sequences. We also disprove a majority version of Stromquist's conjecture, study a robust version, and discuss a discrete version.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2504.10687,
  title  = {Monochromatic configurations on a circle},
  author = {Gábor Damásdi and Nóra Frankl and János Pach and Dömötör Pálvölgyi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.10687},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T22:58:22.154Z